CVE-2026-17042
Medium
Elevated severity or exploit probability.
CVSS breakdown
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:H
| Attack Vector | L | Local |
| Attack Complexity | L | Low |
| Privileges Required | L | Low |
| User Interaction | N | None |
| Scope | C | Changed |
| Confidentiality | N | None |
| Integrity | L | Low |
| Availability | H | High |
Timeline
- 2026-08-19 — Published (NVD)
- 2026-08-25 — Last modified (NVD)
Description
IBM Power Systems Firmware FW950.00 through FW950.H2, OP940.00 through OP940.a1 (Power9), and OP940.00 - OP940.81 (Power HMC) is affected by a vulnerability in host firmware NVRAM parsing. An attacker with root access to a guest partition on an OpenPOWER system can write a specially crafted NVRAM image, causing the host firmware boot stage to crash with possible memory corruption. This condition persists until operator intervention — clearing NVRAM via the service processor — to restore normal operation. This vulnerability only affects OpenPOWER systems; systems running PowerVM are not affected. Successful exploitation results in an integrity and availability impact to the managed system.