Security Resilience

CVE-2026-17042

Memory Safety in Ibm Power System S922 \(9009-22G\) Firmware fw950.00 – fw950.h3

Published
19 August 2026
Modified
25 August 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 7.3
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0014 3th percentile
Risk Priority 49 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). EPSS, Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), epss.first.org. Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2026-17042 is a high-severity Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125) vulnerability in Ibm Power System S922 \(9009-22G\) Firmware. Its CVSS base score is 7.3 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 3th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-8 (Security and Privacy Engineering Principles) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

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…

more

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.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

MITRE ATT&CK v20.0

T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Endpoint Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of services to users.
T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.
T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to elevate privileges.
T1185 Browser Session Hijacking Collection
Adversaries may take advantage of security vulnerabilities and inherent functionality in browser software to change content, modify user-behaviors, and intercept information as part of various browser session hijacking techniques.
T1189 Drive-by Compromise Initial Access
Adversaries may gain access to a system through a user visiting a website over the normal course of browsing.
T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-16828Same product: Ibm Power System S922 \(9009-22G\) Firmware
CVE-2026-93306Same product: Ibm Power System S922 \(9009-22G\) Firmware
CVE-2026-16707Same product: Ibm Power System S922 \(9009-22G\) Firmware
CVE-2026-17124Same vendor: Ibm
CVE-2024-51471Same vendor: Ibm
CVE-2026-17423Same vendor: Ibm
CVE-2026-17015Same vendor: Ibm
CVE-2026-16863Same vendor: Ibm
CVE-2026-18716Same vendor: Ibm
CVE-2026-16839Same vendor: Ibm

Affected Assets

ibm
power system s922 \(9009-22g\) firmware
fw950.00 — fw950.h3
ibm
power system h922 \(9223-22s\) firmware
fw950.00 — fw950.h3
ibm
power system s914 \(9009-41g\) firmware
fw950.00 — fw950.h3
ibm
power system s924 \(9009-42g\) firmware
fw950.00 — fw950.h3
ibm
power system h924 \(9223-42s\) firmware
fw950.00 — fw950.h3
ibm
power system e950 \(9040-mr9\) firmware
fw950.00 — fw950.h3
ibm
power system e980 \(9080-m9s\) firmware
fw950.00 — fw950.h3
ibm
power system ac922 \(8335-gth\) firmware
op940 — op940.a2
ibm
power system ac922 \(8335-gtx\) firmware
op940 — op940.a2
ibm
power hardware management console \(7063-cr2\) firmware
op940 — op940.82

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)

Our mappings, made for this CVE.

Developer testing and evaluation directly finds out-of-bounds read flaws through static analysis, fuzzing, and dynamic bounds checks.

Secure engineering principles require bounds checking and memory-safe constructs that stop out-of-bounds reads from being introduced.

Process isolation confines the effects of an out-of-bounds read to the compromised process.

Input validation rejects malformed indices or lengths that would otherwise cause reads outside buffer bounds.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0)

Our mappings, derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our CWE→CSF cross-walk — links open the control.

PR.PS-06 mostly match
blocks

Secure-development practices such as bounds checking and memory-safe languages directly prevent out-of-bounds reads.

ID.RA-01 partial match
blocks

Vulnerability scanning and recording can discover instances of out-of-bounds reads after code is deployed.

PR.PS-02 partial match
blocks

Routine patching replaces vulnerable code containing out-of-bounds read flaws.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A)

Our mappings, derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our CWE→ISO cross-walk — links open the control.

finds

Security testing in development and acceptance includes fuzzing and static analysis that detect out-of-bounds read defects before release.

prevents

Secure coding standards explicitly forbid unsafe pointer arithmetic and mandate bounds-checked reads, eliminating CWE-125.

References