Description

IBM i 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, and 7.3 could allow a remote authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands and obtain sensitive information due to improper privilege management.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "8.8",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-12T18:17:25.717Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-12T18:17:25.717Z",
  "executiveSummary": "An improper privilege management vulnerability exists in IBM i versions 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, and 7.3.\nThis security flaw allows a remote authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands and obtain sensitive system information.\nThe vulnerability poses significant risk implications to enterprise environments by potentially compromising the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the underlying operating system and hosted data.\nSuccessful exploitation requires the attacker to possess valid authentication credentials within the system.\nOnce authenticated, the attacker can leverage improperly managed privileges to bypass intended security boundaries, execute unauthorized administrative or system-level commands, and harvest sensitive operational data.\nThe combination of arbitrary command execution and information disclosure makes this a critical issue for systems running the affected IBM i releases, necessitating prompt administrative attention and remediation.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability stems from improper privilege management within IBM i 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, and 7.3.\nThe root cause lies in the insufficient enforcement of access controls and authorization checks for specific administrative functions or system interfaces, allowing an authenticated entity to inherit or invoke capabilities outside their intended privilege set.\nAttack requirements mandate that the threat actor possesses remote authentication capabilities, granting them initial access to the target system.\nUpon successful authentication, the attack flow proceeds as the adversary interacts with vulnerable components or application programming interfaces that fail to adequately validate user authorization levels.\nBy supplying maliciously crafted inputs or invoking restricted routines, the authenticated attacker bypasses security checks designed to restrict command execution and data access.\nThis allows the payload to execute arbitrary operating system commands with elevated privileges, resulting in unauthorized operations.\nConcurrently, the improper handling of authorization facilitates unauthorized read access to sensitive system information, configuration data, or internal resources normally shielded from standard authenticated users.\nPost-exploitation impact includes full system compromise, lateral movement within the network, unauthorized data exfiltration, and potential persistence if the attacker leverages executed commands to establish secondary backdoors or modify access control lists."
}