Vulnerability · Published Oct 6, 2026 · Assigned by redhat
CVE-2026-88252Sssd: sssd: denial of service via responder connection retry loop during file descriptor exhaustion
Medium 4.7
In plain English
A medium-severity infinite loop in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 from Red Hat. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.1% (higher than 3% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
A flaw was found in sssd. A local user can cause a Denial of Service (DoS) by exhausting the responder service's available file descriptors (system handles used for open connections). By opening and maintaining many concurrent connections to a responder socket while continuing to queue new connection attempts, an attacker can trigger an unthrottled retry loop. This condition leads to high CPU utilization and stalls the service, preventing legitimate identity and authentication requests from being processed.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian:12 | sssd | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-88252 |
| Debian:13 | sssd | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-88252 |
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | sssd | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-88252 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | sssd | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-88252 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | sssd | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-88252 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | sssd | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-88252 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 | see references |
Weakness: CWE-835 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
References
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-88252 vdb-entry, x_refsource_REDHAT
- RHBZ#2479240 issue-tracking, x_refsource_REDHAT