Description

IBM AIX 7.2, and 7.3 and IBM PowerVM VIOS 4.1 could allow a local attacker to obtain sensitive information or cause a denial of service due to an integer overflow.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "3.6",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-19T20:17:09.880Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-19T20:17:09.880Z",
  "executiveSummary": "An integer overflow vulnerability exists in IBM AIX 7.2, AIX 7.3, and IBM PowerVM VIOS 4.1, potentially allowing a local attacker to obtain sensitive memory information or induce a denial of service condition.\nThe vulnerability arises from improper arithmetic handling within the affected operating system components, enabling local actors with specific privileges to interact with vulnerable system interfaces and trigger the overflow condition.\nRisk implications include the exposure of sensitive kernel or system memory contents, which could facilitate further exploitation, alongside system instability resulting in denial of service states.\nSuccessful exploitation requires local access to the target system, meaning the adversary must already possess an established execution context on the host.\nNo specific remote exploitation vector is indicated, constraining the attack surface to authenticated local users or processes capable of invoking the vulnerable routines.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability is fundamentally rooted in an integer overflow flaw residing within kernel or system-level routines of IBM AIX 7.2, AIX 7.3, and IBM PowerVM VIOS 4.1.\nInteger overflows occur when arithmetic operations result in a value that exceeds the maximum storage capacity of the allocated integer type, typically wrapping around to a small or negative value.\nIn the context of these operating systems, improper bounds checking or validation prior to memory allocation or buffer indexing routines leads to memory corruption or out-of-bounds read and write primitives.\nThe attack flow proceeds as follows: a local attacker interacts with a vulnerable system call, driver interface, or utility that processes untrusted integer inputs without adequate sanitization.\nUpon supplying maliciously crafted inputs designed to induce an integer wrap-around, the internal size calculation yields an incorrect, artificially small value.\nSubsequent memory operations rely on this corrupted size parameter, resulting in buffer overflows, out-of-bounds memory exposure, or memory management faults.\nPrivilege and authentication requirements dictate that the attacker must have local access to the operating system environment to execute code or issue system commands that interface with the vulnerable component.\nPayload behavior during a confidentiality breach involves leaking sensitive kernel structures or process memory back to the attacker interface, while a denial of service manifestation typically involves triggering a kernel panic, segmentation fault, or unhandled exception that crashes the operating system or critical subsystem.\nPost-exploitation impact is characterized by either the unauthorized disclosure of protected data residing in memory or the complete disruption of system availability due to forced service termination or system crashes."
}