* [CVE-2026-97530][LOW] scsi: qla2xxx: Fix soft lockup polling continuation IOCB signature [ Upstream
@ 2026-09-25 13:03 21% AL-KERNEL
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From: AL-KERNEL @ 2026-09-25 13:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: kernel-cve
CVE: CVE-2026-97530
Priority: LOW
AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: scsi: qla2xxx: Fix soft lockup polling continuation IOCB signature [ Upstream
Commit: 6e6c2ba9022eb8f9b062c81bdc6fd24c7b4c4c16
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=6e6c2ba9022eb8f9b062c81bdc6fd24c7b4c4c16
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97530
Analysis date: Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:03:49 -0400
ActionableScore: 2
ActionableScore lower bound: unknown
Actionable bucket: Ordinary Moderate
Manual review required: NO
Summary:
No one-sentence report phrase was found.
======================================================================
ABOUT THIS REPORT
======================================================================
The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-97530 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97530
The original announcement does not normally provide a security severity
estimate, CVSS assessment, or enough information to determine whether the
reported kernel bug represents a practically relevant security issue.
This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel
vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin. It combines
an autonomous classifier with LLM-assisted technical analysis and a
separate ActionableScore mechanism.
The purpose of this report is to prioritize Linux kernel CVEs before
manual review, identify cases that require prompt investigation, and
support automatic closure of issues that are unlikely to have meaningful
security impact.
Published priority for this report: LOW
Manual review required: NO
A detailed explanation of the methodology and priority rules is included
at the end of this message.
======================================================================
AL-KERNEL CLASSIFICATION RESULT
======================================================================
CVE-2026-97530 LOW https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-97530 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN LOW Maybe valid. Check manually. Hints by AL-KERNEL: The best (paranoid) CVSS is 'AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H';*CWE-835;**CWE-400;*CWE-20;BEST CVSS score: '6.5';DESCR 'A qla2xxx Fibre Channel driver soft lockup can occur when a continuation IOCB payload contains 0xDEADDEAD at the byte offset normally used for a response signature. The driver can misinterpret payload data as RESPONSE_PROCESSED and loop indefinitely in interrupt context without advancing the response ring or reducing the remaining IOCB count. An attacker able to send crafted Fibre Channel traffic through the attached FC fabric can cause CPU exhaustion and denial of service. For the CVSS the PR:N because no local account or privileges on the target host are required, although access to the relevant Fibre Channel SAN is required. This is adjacent network reachable rather than Internet reachable. Impact is denial of service only. No memory corruption, information disclosure, integrity impact, or supported privilege escalation path is indicated.';YES REQUIRES MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 2) YES DEADLOCK INIT DMAorINTERRUPT HARDWARE LINUS NO NO checked
======================================================================
ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS
======================================================================
ActionableScore=2
PrimitiveClass=CLASS_C
RealUAF=NO
HostAdminRequired=NO
NamespaceScopedPrivilege=UNKNOWN
ImportantCandidate=NO
ManualReview=RECOMMENDED
AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES
1. ActionableScore
* Raw conservative score: 2
* Conservative score: 2
* Raw paranoid score: 2
* Paranoid score: 2
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**::
2. Signal breakdown
* +2 Direct attacker-controlled adjacent-network trigger. A Fibre Channel endpoint able to send crafted FC payloads to the affected qla2xxx adapter can reach the continuation IOCB processing path.
* +1 Reliable host DoS. A payload value of 0xDEADDEAD at the relevant continuation IOCB payload offset causes an infinite cpu_relax loop in interrupt or DPC context and a CPU soft lockup.
* -1 Rare and difficult-to-reach subsystem. Exploitation requires an affected qla2xxx Fibre Channel HBA and access to its attached FC SAN fabric. An ordinary attacker cannot instantiate this hardware and fabric topology.
Important non-awarded signals:
* No UAF, stale post-lifetime object use, double release, refcount mutation, OOB access, or arbitrary write is established.
* No controlled reclaim, object replacement, callback influence, information disclosure, integrity effect, or privilege escalation primitive is established.
* No extra Availability point is awarded because the CPU soft lockup is already counted as the reliable DoS consequence.
* No race penalty is applied. The trigger is a deterministic semantic aliasing condition and not a narrow timing race.
* No firmware-mediated input score is added because the relevant attacker-controlled FC frame reaches the adapter receive path directly through the attached FC fabric.
3. Reachability analysis
The evaluated attacker is a remote or adjacent Fibre Channel fabric participant, not a local host user. The attacker sends an FC frame whose continuation IOCB payload bytes at data[56..59] equal 0xDEADDEAD. The qla2xxx driver incorrectly reads those payload bytes as response_t signature state and spins without advancing the response ring.
Host administrator privileges on the target are not required once the attacker can transmit traffic through the relevant FC SAN. However, practical reachability requires access to the storage fabric, such as a compromised, malicious, or otherwise authorized FC initiator connected to the same SAN zone or path. This is not public Internet reachable under normal deployments.
No namespace capability operation is involved. NamespaceScopedPrivilege is UNKNOWN because the supplied patch contains no namespace-related access-control path.
4. Primitive and severity interpretation
The exact primitive is attacker-controlled semantic aliasing of a continuation IOCB payload as RESPONSE_PROCESSED state. This creates an infinite polling loop in qla27xx_copy_multiple_pkt or qla27xx_copy_fpin_pkt. The loop repeatedly executes cpu_relax without advancing ring_ptr or decrementing entry_count_remaining.
This is not a memory-lifetime bug. There is no freed object, stale pointer after object lifetime, refcount misuse, structured-object reuse, or attacker-controlled memory corruption. The demonstrated effect is a CPU soft lockup and denial of service in interrupt or DPC processing.
PrimitiveClass is CLASS_C because the behavior is a deterministic invalid-state and DoS condition without an independently useful corruption primitive. ImportantCandidate is NO because there is no unresolved memory-corruption, authorization-bypass, ownership, or privilege-escalation mechanism. AutoDowngradeAllowed is YES because the patch-supported impact is constrained to DoS and no stronger primitive remains unresolved.
Likely operational severity is ordinary Moderate in the affected FC SAN environment. It should still receive manual review where FC storage networks include untrusted tenants, externally managed initiators, or weak SAN zoning.
5. One-sentence report phrase
A crafted Fibre Channel continuation IOCB payload containing 0xDEADDEAD can be misinterpreted by qla2xxx as an unfinished response entry, causing an infinite interrupt-context polling loop and CPU soft lockup.
6. Manual review recommendation
MANUAL CHECK RECOMMENDED
The vulnerability is directly triggerable by crafted traffic from an attached Fibre Channel fabric participant and can cause host denial of service, but the patch establishes no memory corruption or privilege-escalation primitive.
7. Call-site confidence
Call-site confidence: high
======================================================================
UPSTREAM PATCH SUMMARY
======================================================================
Patch: scsi: qla2xxx: Fix soft lockup polling continuation IOCB signature [ Upstream
Commit: 6e6c2ba9022eb8f9b062c81bdc6fd24c7b4c4c16
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=6e6c2ba9022eb8f9b062c81bdc6fd24c7b4c4c16
Changed files:
drivers/scsi/qla2xxx/qla_isr.c
Diff excerpt:
Not included in this email. See the upstream URL for the full patch.
Full patch:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=6e6c2ba9022eb8f9b062c81bdc6fd24c7b4c4c16
======================================================================
DETAILED REPORT METHODOLOGY
======================================================================
The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-97530 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97530
The original CVE announcement normally does not include a security-level
estimate. In particular, it may not contain a CVSS assessment, an impact
level, or enough information to determine whether the reported bug is a
practically relevant security issue. One purpose of this parallel CVE list
is to provide that missing technical and prioritization information.
The original goal of the AL-KERNEL project was to prioritize Linux kernel
CVE analysis automatically before manual review. The system can also help
identify non-security issues that may be suitable for automatic closure.
This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel
vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin.
The first analysis stage combines an autonomous classifier with additional
LLM-based analysis. The autonomous classifier runs locally on a CPU and is
based on a backpropagation neural network. Together, these mechanisms
produce a technical vulnerability description, identify likely weakness
types, estimate CVSS severity, and provide input for ActionableScore.
Two CVSS estimates are retained because incomplete kernel vulnerability
information often permits more than one defensible interpretation:
Conservative CVSS vector: Not available
The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 6.5
The conservative vector represents a lower-impact interpretation.
The Best/paranoid vector intentionally represents a plausible upper-bound
interpretation and should not automatically be treated as demonstrated
real-world impact.
CVSS may also need to be adjusted for a particular Linux deployment,
because actual reachability, privileges, enabled kernel configuration,
hardware, namespaces, exposed device nodes, and other environmental
conditions can differ significantly between systems.
A separate ActionableScore mechanism evaluates practical remediation
urgency. Its analysis may include reachability, attack prerequisites,
subsystem exposure, memory-corruption characteristics, denial-of-service
reliability, and possible confidentiality, integrity, or
privilege-escalation impact.
Conservative ActionableScore: unknown
Paranoid ActionableScore: 2
The final base severity is taken directly from the second tab-separated
field of the AL-KERNEL classification result. ActionableScore does not
replace or independently override that final AL-KERNEL decision, and
if ActionableScore adjusted impact level of ALKERNEL, then you would see
self-readable flags above like INCREASED_TO_HIGH_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCOREHIGHEREQTHAN7.
For an AL-KERNEL result of MODERATE, this report uses the following
additional presentation split:
ActionableScore below 5 -> MODERATE REGULAR
ActionableScore 5 or more -> MODERATE 7.0
The distinction between MODERATE REGULAR and MODERATE 7.0 makes it
possible to identify Moderate issues that should receive manual analysis
and fixes before lower-priority MODERATE REGULAR issues. In many cases,
MODERATE REGULAR fixes may wait for a later rebase or routine update.
There is one override in which MODERATE REGULAR becomes MODERATE 7.0
even when the ActionableScore is below 5. When the AL-KERNEL result
contains the KPANIC flag, a MODERATE result is always presented as
MODERATE 7.0. The KPANIC flag selected with few regexps without
usage of AI at all, so it helps to detect cases when Kernel Crash happens
and similar (to filter False-Negative results from the LLM usage).
KPANIC indicates that a reliable kernel crash, kernel panic, or similarly
serious kernel availability impact was identified by the classification
workflow.
AL-KERNEL base severity for this report: LOW
KPANIC detected for this report: NO
Published priority for this report (same as in Subject): LOW
These results are intended to support engineering triage. They are
machine-generated estimates, and cases marked for manual review should
be validated by a human security engineer before final disposition.
For more info read docs linked from here: https://kernelcve.org/
(and you can submit you own patch there to generate such a report
for non-existant CVE-id yet).
Note that in many cases this AI tool selects higher severity, than
real is (means you can expect Importants instead of Moderate 7.0 or
Moderates 7.0 instead of regular Moderates). If you see such cases,
please use reply email interface to add additional manual analyses
info to this particular CVE.
And please, please, let me know when you see Lows instead of Importants
or Important instead of Low (because particular for such cases I
need to tune this AI tool to make it better for this one and next similar).
My contact email for such notifications is [email protected] (and both
send reply to CVE record itself too and see "reply" button below for howto reply).
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