[CVE-2026-89514][MODERATE REGULAR] scsi: fnic: Use GFP_ATOMIC for VLAN alloc under spinlock [ Upstream

[AL-KERNEL <alkernel@kernelcve.org>]

CVE: CVE-2026-89514
Priority: MODERATE REGULAR
AL-KERNEL base severity: MODERATE
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: scsi: fnic: Use GFP_ATOMIC for VLAN alloc under spinlock [ Upstream
Commit: c4ade059aaeb51fdb3f4ae71e1ea3e2019b85178
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=c4ade059aaeb51fdb3f4ae71e1ea3e2019b85178
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-89514
Analysis date: Fri, 11 Sep 2026 19:53:08 -0400
ActionableScore: 4
ActionableScore lower bound: 3
Actionable bucket: Borderline / manual review recommended
Manual review required: YES

Summary:
No one-sentence report phrase was found.

======================================================================
ABOUT THIS REPORT
======================================================================

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-89514 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-89514

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: MODERATE REGULAR
Manual review required: YES

A detailed explanation of the methodology and priority rules is included
at the end of this message.

======================================================================
AL-KERNEL CLASSIFICATION RESULT
======================================================================

CVE-2026-89514	MODERATE	https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-89514 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-667;*CWE-833;CWE-754;Other CVSS 'AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '6.5';DESCR 'fnic FCoE VLAN response handling may allocate memory with GFP_KERNEL while holding an IRQ safe spinlock. This can sleep in atomic context and may trigger a kernel warning or deadlock when a FIP VLAN response is processed. For the CVSS the PR:N is used because the trigger can come from network adjacent FCoE or FIP traffic without a local user account on the victim. The attack is not Internet remote in the usual sense and requires reachability to the same FCoE or storage fabric. Impact is denial of service only through warning, hang, or deadlock. No concrete information disclosure, memory corruption, or privilege escalation primitive is indicated by the code change.';YES REQUIRES MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Borderline / manual review recommended (with actual score 4)	YES	DEADLOCK WARNONLY SIMPLEFIX HARDWARE LINUS  INCREASED_TO_MODERATE7_FROM_LOW_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS_AND_ACTIONABLESCOREHIGHER4 DECREASED_TO_MODERATEREG_BASED_ON_FALSEPOSCHECKOFKP	YES	NO	checked

======================================================================
ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS
======================================================================

ActionableScore=4
ActionableScoreLower=3
PrimitiveClass=CLASS_C
RealUAF=NO
HostAdminRequired=NO
NamespaceScopedPrivilege=NO
ImportantCandidate=NO
ManualReview=RECOMMENDED
AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES

1. ActionableScore

* Raw conservative score: 3
* Conservative score: 3. No floor or cap applied.
* Raw paranoid score: 4
* Paranoid score: 4. No floor or cap applied.
* Final recommended bucket: **Borderline / manual review recommended**::

2. Signal breakdown

Conservative signals:

* +2 Remote or adjacent network reachable: FIP VLAN response traffic can reach `fnic_fcoe_process_vlan_resp()` over the FCoE or storage fabric without a local user account on the victim.
* +1 Reliable kernel warning or possible DoS: `GFP_KERNEL` allocation under `spin_lock_irqsave()` can sleep in atomic context and may cause a warning, hang, or deadlock.

Paranoid additional signal:

* +1 Important storage path: the affected code is in an FCoE SCSI storage driver, so a deadlock can affect storage availability more seriously than a purely local device warning.

Non-awarded signals:

* No UAF, double free, refcount misuse, OOB access, or stale object lifetime primitive is established.
* No controlled reclaim, arbitrary write, directed kernel corruption, information leak, or privilege escalation is demonstrated.
* No extra availability point is awarded for the same warning or deadlock consequence.
* No rare-hardware penalty is applied because the driver is hardware-specific, but the supplied evidence does not justify treating the issue as physical-only or unreachable.
* No host-admin penalty is applied because the trigger is plausibly external FCoE or FIP traffic, not local administrative configuration.

3. Reachability analysis

The plausible attacker is an adjacent network or storage-fabric peer able to send or influence FIP VLAN response traffic processed by the fnic FCoE driver. This is not Internet-remote in the usual sense, but it can be reachable within a data-center or storage network. No host-admin-equivalent privilege is required on the victim for the traffic-processing trigger, so `HostAdminRequired=NO`.

Namespace-scoped privilege is not relevant here. The issue depends on the fnic driver and an FCoE environment being present, but the patch does not establish a separate host-privileged setup requirement controlled by the attacker. There is no race requirement. The failure is an invalid sleep-capable allocation mode used while holding an IRQ-safe spinlock.

4. Primitive and severity interpretation

The exact primitive is invalid blocking allocation in atomic context: `kzalloc_obj()` used the default `GFP_KERNEL` behavior while `vlans_lock` was held through `spin_lock_irqsave()`. This can sleep where sleeping is forbidden and can lead to a kernel warning or deadlock.

This is not an active structured UAF and not fixed stale storage. It is best classified as `CLASS_C`, meaning crash, warning, hang, or invalid-state behavior without an independently useful corruption primitive. The demonstrated consequence is denial of service through warning or deadlock. Stronger consequences such as memory corruption or privilege escalation are speculative and not supported by the patch.

`ImportantCandidate=NO` because there is no kernel corruption, ownership violation, security-boundary bypass, or unresolved lifetime/refcount primitive. `AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES` because the issue is DoS-only and no meaningful exploitation leverage beyond availability loss is established. Operational severity is borderline Moderate because the trigger may be adjacent-network reachable and affects a storage driver, but it remains a DoS-only bug.

5. One-sentence report phrase

An FCoE FIP VLAN response path in the fnic driver can allocate memory with GFP_KERNEL while holding an IRQ-safe spinlock, allowing adjacent storage-fabric traffic to trigger sleeping-in-atomic-context behavior and potentially a kernel warning, hang, or deadlock.

6. Manual review recommendation

MANUAL CHECK RECOMMENDED

Reason: the bug is adjacent-network reachable in a storage driver and may affect availability, but the patch supports only DoS-class behavior with no memory corruption or privilege-escalation primitive.

7. Call-site confidence

Call-site confidence: medium

======================================================================
UPSTREAM PATCH SUMMARY
======================================================================

Patch: scsi: fnic: Use GFP_ATOMIC for VLAN alloc under spinlock [ Upstream
Commit: c4ade059aaeb51fdb3f4ae71e1ea3e2019b85178
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=c4ade059aaeb51fdb3f4ae71e1ea3e2019b85178

Changed files:
  drivers/scsi/fnic/fip.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=c4ade059aaeb51fdb3f4ae71e1ea3e2019b85178

======================================================================
DETAILED REPORT METHODOLOGY
======================================================================

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-89514 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-89514

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: AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
  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: 3
  Paranoid ActionableScore: 4

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: MODERATE
KPANIC detected for this report: NO
Published priority for this report (same as in Subject): MODERATE REGULAR

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 alexanjelausa@gmail.com (and both
send reply to CVE record itself too and see "reply" button below for howto reply).