CVE-2026-97948

A low impact denial of service flaw was found in the Linux kernel's PowerPC Enhanced Error Handling (EEH) subsystem. When an EEH event is handled for an error detected directly on a PHB, or for a device whose driver returns PCI_ERS_RESULT_NEED_RESET without defining EEH-sensitive error handlers (such as slot_reset() or resume()), eeh_rmv_device() attempts to re-acquire the pci_rescan_remove_lock that eeh_handle_normal_event() already holds. This recursive locking deadlocks the eehd kernel thread and blocks PCI error recovery, resulting in a local denial of service. Triggering the flaw requires local access to a PowerPC system with EEH support and a specific PCI error recovery path, and it affects only availability, with no impact to confidentiality or integrity. Although the Red Hat CVSS:3.1 base score for this flaw is 5.5 (Moderate), Red Hat Product Security rates its impact as Low because of these restrictive preconditions and the availability-only consequence. The vulnerable code is present only in recent Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 and 10, Red Hat In-Vehicle OS 2, and OpenShift Container Platform 4.22 and later kernel builds; earlier Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7, and 8 releases and their kernel-rt builds, as well as earlier OpenShift Container Platform RHCOS releases, do not contain the vulnerable code and are therefore not affected. The fix for the affected streams is currently deferred to a future update; the residual risk until then is a potential hang of PCI error recovery on affected PowerPC systems when the specific error conditions occur.