IBM Power Systems Firmware: memory corruption
High7.3CVE-2026-17042 · Published Aug 19, 2026 · updated Aug 25, 2026
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 versions
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| Power Systems Firmware Product | >= FW950.00, <= FW950.H2 | No fix yet |
| >= OP940.00, <= OP940.a1 | No fix yet | |
| >= OP940.00, <= OP940.81 | No fix yet |
Details and references
- CVSS 3.1
- CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:H
- Severity from
- the vendor (its own CVE record or advisory)
- Weakness
- CWE-125
More IBM advisories
All IBM| Date | Advisory | Severity | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 19 | IBM DS8900F (R9.4): information disclosure | High7.4 | No fix yet |
| Aug 19 | IBM DS8900F: authenticated user could create a user with privileged user | High7.5 | No fix yet |
| Aug 19 | IBM DS8900F (R9.4): authenticated user could read or modify another user's | Medium5.4 | No fix yet |
| Aug 19 | IBM PowerVM Hypervisor Platform KeyStore | Medium5.1 | No fix yet |
| Aug 19 | IBM PowerVM Hypervisor: local attacker could decrypt encrypted data | Medium5.3 | No fix yet |
| Aug 19 | IBM go-slug: local attacker could bypass | Medium5.5 | No fix yet |