The vulnerability is located in the GSS‑RPC transport layer of MIT Kerberos 5. When a client switches from an RPCSEC_GSS or AUTH_GSSAPI flavor to a non‑GSS flavor on the same TCP connection, the prior authentication context is not released. This oversight allows an unauthenticated attacker to repeatedly establish and abandon GSS authentication contexts, gradually consuming memory in the kadmind daemon until it fails to allocate further resources, resulting in a denial of service.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and the associated RHEL ELS releases, as well as Red Hat Hardened Images, are affected. The issue is present in MIT Kerberos 5 version 1.4 and later bundled with these platforms.

Based on the description, the CVSS score is 7.5, indicating a high severity, while the EPSS score is not available and the vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. The flaw can be exploited remotely and without any authentication by sending specially crafted RPC requests to kadmind from any host that can reach the service. The exploit's simplicity and lack of prerequisites make it a significant risk to availability for systems that rely on kadmind for Kerberos administration.