CVE-2026-46177 ipmi: Add limits to event and receive message requests
A malicious or buggy BMC can cause the Linux kernel IPMI driver to hang by never signaling completion, leading to a denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-46177?
CVE-2026-46177 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 28 May 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ipmi: Add limits to event and receive message requests
The driver would just fetch events and receive messages until the BMC said it was done. To avoid issues with BMCs that never say they are done, add a limit of 10 fetches at a time.
In addition, an si interface has an attn state it can return from the hardware which is supposed to cause a flag fetch to see if the driver needs to fetch events or message or a few other things. If the attn bit gets stuck, it's a similar problem. So allow messages in between flag fetches so the driver itself doesn't get stuck.
This is a more general fix than the previous fix for the specific bad BMC, but should fix the more general issue of a BMC that won't stop saying it has data.
This has been there from the beginning of the driver. It's not a bug per-se, but it is accounting for bugs in BMCs.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-46177?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2026-46177?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2026-46177 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-46177 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as AZL-89081, BELL-CVE-2026-46177, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-46177, GHSA-h4pv-4jh4-mxpf, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-46177, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2026-46177 and 3 more.