Resource exhaustion in Linux kernel - CVE-2026-97981
Published: September 28, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU152486
CSH Severity: Medium
CVSS v4: 6.9 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2026-97981
CWE-ID: CWE-400
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service.
The vulnerability exists due to improper NAPI work budget accounting in the Cortina Gemini Ethernet driver's gmac_rx receive loop when processing malformed Ethernet frames. A remote attacker can send a stream of malformed Ethernet frames to cause a denial of service.
Affected software
Linux kernel
How to mitigate CVE-2026-97981
Install security update from vendor's repository.
Linux kernel - update to 7.0 rc3