CVE-2026-97981 net: ethernet: cortina: Count dropped frames as NAPI work
A flaw in the Cortina Ethernet driver allows remote attackers to cause denial of service by sending malformed frames that bypass NAPI budget limits.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-97981?
CVE-2026-97981 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 25 Sep 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net: ethernet: cortina: Count dropped frames as NAPI work
The RX loop only consumes budget when it successfully delivers a frame. Error paths keep consuming descriptors without reducing the budget, so a stream of bad frames can process the entire receive ring in one poll.
Move the budget accounting to a common end-of-frame path. This counts each completed frame as NAPI work whether it was delivered or dropped, matching the behavior of the vendor driver.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-97981?
How do I fix CVE-2026-97981?
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-2026-97981 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-97981 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-104403, BELL-CVE-2026-97981, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-97981, GHSA-qrx6-pjc4-f5p5, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-97981.