Out-of-bounds Read in IBM Power Hardware Management Console \(7063-Cr2\) Firmware

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.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.3 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.001 (2.8th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 3rd percentile — 2.8% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-17042: held from 0.001 to 0.001.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.001 · newest: 0.001 · change: +0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-17042?
CVE-2026-17042 is a high-severity vulnerability in IBM Power Hardware Management Console \(7063-Cr2\) Firmware, classified under Out-of-bounds Read. CVSS score: 7.3/10. Published 2026-08-19.
How severe is CVE-2026-17042?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.3 out of 10.