Intersect, the governance body behind Cardano, asked stake pool operators at the end of October to move their servers to a new Linux kernel. The request covers both types of machine in a pool: the block producer and the relays that connect it to the network. What is confirmed: the vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-98432, Ubuntu's security tracker lists it with a CVSS 3 score of 9.8 out of 10 and a "Critical" rating, and nobody has yet counted how many of the 2,884 registered Cardano pools run a vulnerable kernel. Our assessment follows further down: the flaw does not touch the balance of delegated ADA, but it can affect the rewards of the current epoch.
Intersect's Cardano stake pool warning, point by point
The notice went out to pool operators on October 30 and consists of three instructions any server administrator will recognise: check the running kernel on the block producer and the relays, install the fixed kernel as soon as your distribution ships it, and then reboot. A reboot is unavoidable with a kernel update, because the old kernel keeps running until then.
The warning explicitly p...
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