CVE 2026 98432

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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's IPv4 networking subsystem. A race condition occurs during concurrent processing of retransmitted Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection requests or socket migrations, allowing socket options to be freed while still in use. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending specially timed network requests, triggering a use-after-free condition. This issue primarily results in a system crash leading to a Denial of Service (DoS) or potential memory corruption.

This vulnerability is rated as Critical severity for Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to cause kernel memory corruption or an immediate system crash over standard IPv4 TCP network traffic without requiring local privileges or user interaction. In default enterprise configurations across Red Hat environments, TCP services accept incoming connections without specialized tuning, making the concurrent connection handling paths inherently exposed to remote networks. Although reliably executing arbitrary code through this timing-sensitive use-after-free scenario requires precise heap control, the lack of network prerequisites and the potential for severe system instability elevate the impact above Important.

See the security bulletin for a detailed mitigation procedure.

Bugzilla 2553390 : kernel: ipv4: free inet_opt and ireq_opt after an RCU grace period

CWE-825 : Expired Pointer Dereference

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

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CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications ).

The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Frequently Asked Questions

"Under investigation" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is affected by this vulnerability. It only means that our Analysis Team is still working on determining whether the product is affected and how it is affected.

The term 'Affected' means that our Analysis team has determined that this product, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 or OpenShift Container Platform 4, is affected by this vulnerability and a fix may be released to address this issue in the near future. This includes all minor releases of this product unless noted otherwise in the Statement text.

Upgrade to a supported product version that includes a fix for this vulnerability (recommended).

Apply a mitigation (if one exists).

Customers with the Technical Account Manager (TAM) RHEL Security Select Add-on can review this CVE directly with their TAM.

Apply a mitigation (if one exists).

Red Hat Engineering focuses on addressing high-priority issues based on the impact and product lifecycle expectations. Therefore, lower-priority issues will not receive immediate fixes.

Customers with the technical account manager (TAM) RHEL Security Select Add-on can review this CVE directly with their TAM.

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