Bug 2562769 (CVE-2026-99165)

Summary:	CVE-2026-99165 kernel: kernel: Denial of service via NULL pointer dereference in SCTP stream handling
Product:	[Other] Security Response	Reporter:	OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component:	vulnerability	Assignee:	Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified	CC:	akhatavk, aos-team-art-private, asdas, dpaolell, jdelft, jupierce, lgarciaa, mbiarnes, ppalepu, ppostler, prdhamdh, rhel-process-autobot, sghai, sidsharm, suppawar, vlaad, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Security
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	---
Doc Text:	A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) implementation. This flaw allows a remote peer or local user to cause a denial of service (DoS) through a kernel crash. When message interleaving is enabled, the kernel drops the socket lock while waiting for association establishment or send-buffer availability, allowing handshake processing to free output stream extensions without proper revalidation. When the sending process resumes and accesses the unvalidated stream, it dereferences a null pointer, causing a system panic.	Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:		Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-10-28 11:06:13 UTC

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

sctp: revalidate output stream after association connect wait

When message interleaving is enabled, the first send waits for association
establishment before building its data chunks.  The wait drops the socket
lock, and handshake processing can reduce the output stream count to the
peer-advertised inbound stream count.  sctp_stream_init() then frees the
extension of every removed stream.

The sender resumes with the stream that it checked before the wait.  If the
peer removed that stream, sctp_outq_tail() later dereferences its NULL
extension.  Fatal-oops policies then panic the host.

KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x38-0x3f]
RIP: sctp_outq_tail+0x49e/0xaa0
Call Trace:
 sctp_primitive_SEND
 sctp_sendmsg_to_asoc
 sctp_sendmsg

A range check alone is insufficient.  Stream reconfiguration can grow the
output count again while the lock is released without recreating extensions
freed by the earlier shrink.  The stream can then be in range while its
extension remains NULL.  The send-buffer wait has the same issue.

Factor the range and extension checks into a helper and repeat both after
each send-path wait that drops the socket lock.  Once the lock is
reacquired, the validation remains stable through data creation and
queueing.

If validation fails after the connect wait, the auto-created association is
already established.  Return ESRCH so the existing caller path keeps it
under state-machine ownership instead of freeing it directly, which would
leave protocol, counter and socket state inconsistent.