CVE-2026-17042

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.

Published 19 Aug 2026, 20:17 UTC Last modified 19 Aug 2026, 20:17 UTC

7.3

CVSS 3.1 HIGH base score CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:H

Attack profile

The conditions required to exploit this vulnerability and its potential impact.

Attack vector Local

Attack complexity Low

Privileges required Low

User interaction None

Scope Changed

Confidentiality None

Integrity Low

Availability High

Exploitability2.0

Impact4.7

Affected products

Product applicability statements supplied with the NVD record.

NVD has not published structured affected-product data for this record.

Weakness classification

CWE categories help security teams group the underlying software weakness.

CWECWE-125

Source references

External advisories, patches and technical reports attached to this CVE record.

NVD National Vulnerability Database recordnvd.nist.gov 01 Technical reference psirt@us.ibm.com