CVE-2026-17042

Summary

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.

Affected Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus
IBMPower Systems FirmwareFW950.00 <= FW950.H2affected
IBMPower Systems FirmwareOP940.00 <= OP940.a1affected
IBMPower Systems FirmwareOP940.00 <= OP940.81affected

Weaknesses

  • CWE-125: CWE-125 Out-of-bounds Read

ADP Enrichment

CISA ADP Vulnrichment

  • SSVC:
  • Exploitation: none
    • Automatable: no
    • Technical Impact: partial

References