Description

IBM AIX 7.2, and 7.3 and IBM PowerVM VIOS 4.1 could allow a local attacker to cause a denial of service due to a heap buffer overflow.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "5.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-19T20:17:07.170Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-19T20:17:07.170Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A heap buffer overflow vulnerability has been identified in IBM AIX 7.2, IBM AIX 7.3, and IBM PowerVM VIOS 4.1. This vulnerability allows a local attacker to cause a denial of service condition on affected systems.\nThe flaw stems from improper bounds checking within memory management operations, leading to heap corruption when processing specially crafted local inputs.\nSuccessful exploitation requires local access to the target system, where an authenticated or unprivileged local user can trigger the heap buffer overflow.\nThe primary impact of this vulnerability is system instability and availability disruption, resulting in a denial of service state that requires administrative intervention or system reboot to recover.\nGiven the requirement for local execution, the risk is constrained to environments where untrusted users possess local shell access or execution capabilities.\nOrganizations operating the specified versions of IBM AIX and IBM PowerVM VIOS should evaluate their exposure and apply available vendor patches or remediation guidance promptly.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability is classified as a heap buffer overflow, occurring within the memory handling routines of IBM AIX 7.2, IBM AIX 7.3, and IBM PowerVM VIOS 4.1.\nThe root cause of the issue lies in the failure of the vulnerable component to adequately validate the size and length of input data before copying it into a dynamically allocated heap buffer.\nWhen a local attacker supplies input that exceeds the allocated boundary of the heap buffer, adjacent memory structures on the heap are overwritten, causing memory corruption.\nAttack execution flow requires the local user to interact with the vulnerable subsystem or binary, supplying a malformed payload designed to trigger the out-of-bounds write.\nUpon processing the malicious input, the heap corruption destabilizes the runtime environment, leading to memory management faults, application crashes, or a complete kernel panic resulting in a denial of service.\nPrivilege requirements are limited to local execution capabilities, meaning the attacker must already possess an interactive session or the ability to execute code locally on the target operating system instance.\nNetwork exposure is not a direct vector for this vulnerability, as remote exploitation is precluded by the local execution prerequisite.\nPost-exploitation impact is strictly bounded to availability disruption; there is no indication within the vulnerability characteristics supporting arbitrary code execution or privilege escalation beyond the crash condition."
}