CVE-2026-98614 sctp: avoid livelock while updating retransmit path
A remote attacker can cause a kernel livelock in the SCTP subsystem by triggering a specific transport state condition, leading to 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-2026-98614?
CVE-2026-98614 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 18 Oct 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:
sctp: avoid livelock while updating retransmit path
sctp_assoc_update_retran_path() can loop forever when every remaining transport, including retran_path, is SCTP_UNCONFIRMED: the state check runs before the wraparound test, so the loop cannot observe that it has completed a full pass.
Fix this by considering a transport only when it is not UNCONFIRMED, then checking whether the walk has returned to retran_path. This makes the full-pass termination independent of the transport state while preserving the existing fallback selection semantics.
Also restore the NULL guard around the retran_path assignment. In the all-UNCONFIRMED case there is no eligible replacement transport, and installing NULL would leave later retransmit-path users and the debug print with a NULL path.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-98614?
How do I fix CVE-2026-98614?
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-2026-98614 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-98614 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-108596, BELL-CVE-2026-98614, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98614, GHSA-hjhx-c2pg-c62c, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98614.