Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HSummary
CVE-2026-4897 is a medium-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Redhat Enterprise Linux. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 3th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SC-6 (Resource Availability) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-16214
Vulnerability Data
A flaw was found in polkit. A local user can exploit this by providing a specially crafted, excessively long input to the `polkit-agent-helper-1` setuid binary via standard input (stdin). This unbounded input can lead to an out-of-memory (OOM) condition, resulting…
more
in a Denial of Service (DoS) for the system.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
The vulnerability is an input-triggered OOM condition in a setuid binary that directly enables local Endpoint DoS via application/system exploitation (T1499.004).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly requires validation of input size/length on stdin to the setuid helper, preventing the unbounded allocation that triggers OOM.
Mandates protection against resource-exhaustion DoS by limiting per-process memory allocation for privileged binaries such as polkit-agent-helper-1.
Enforces least privilege on the setuid binary so that only authorized users/processes can invoke it, reducing the attack surface for local OOM exploitation.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Monitoring capacity and taking action to maintain availability directly reduces unchecked resource allocation.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Baseline comparison of CPU, memory and bandwidth usage helps surface uncontrolled resource allocations before they cause service degradation.
Capacity projections and elasticity measures ensure that allocation requests are bounded and can be throttled, reducing the window in which an attacker can force unbounded resource reservations.
Defining retention periods and deletion schedules for backup copies prevents indefinite accumulation of data on storage media without corresponding resource-management controls.
Architectural redundancy and automatic failover limit the impact of an attacker who forces excessive allocations, because spare capacity can absorb the load until the primary instance recovers.
Documented incident response procedures that include activation of continuity plans and controlled recovery help ensure that resource consumption triggered by an incident is bounded and managed rather than left unbounded.
Mandating tested continuity procedures that preserve or replace resource-limiting controls prevents an attacker from exploiting the absence of throttling mechanisms during an outage.