IBM PowerVM Hypervisor <=1120: Hypercall VCPU Hang Vulnerability
CVE-2026-17097 Published on August 19, 2026
Power System Improper Validation
IBM PowerVM Hypervisor FW1120.00, FW1110.00 through FW1110.30, FW1060.00 through FW1060.80, and FW950.00 through FW950.H2 is affected by a vulnerability in the PowerVM hypervisor call interface. An attacker with root access to a guest partition can issue a specially crafted hypervisor call causing a virtual processor to become permanently unresponsive, requiring a full platform re-IPL to restore normal operation. In some cases this may also cause the guest to inject a small amount of data into hypervisor or partition memory with no attacker control over the target location. Successful exploitation results in an integrity and availability impact to the managed system.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-17097 can be exploited with local system access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have no impact on confidentiality, with no impact on integrity, and a high impact on availability.
Weakness Type
What is an out-of-bounds array index Vulnerability?
The product uses untrusted input when calculating or using an array index, but the product does not validate or incorrectly validates the index to ensure the index references a valid position within the array.
CVE-2026-17097 has been classified to as an out-of-bounds array index vulnerability or weakness.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-17097
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Affected Versions
IBM PowerVM Hypervisor:- Version FW1120.00 is affected.
- Version FW1110.00, <= FW1110.30 is affected.
- Version FW1060.00, <= FW1060.80 is affected.
- Version FW950.00, <= FW950.H2 is affected.