Description

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

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "7.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-20T22:17:16.103Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-20T22:17:16.103Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A stack buffer overflow vulnerability exists within IBM AIX 7.2, 7.3, and IBM PowerVM VIOS 4.1.\nThis vulnerability allows a remote attacker to induce a denial of service condition on affected systems.\nThe flaw stems from improper bounds checking during data processing, enabling threat actors to corrupt the stack memory space.\nSuccessful exploitation compromises system availability, resulting in application crashes or complete system destabilization.\nThe risk implication is severe for environments relying on continuous uptime of enterprise operating systems and virtualization infrastructure.\nAttackers require network access to the vulnerable service to transmit malicious payloads capable of triggering the memory corruption.\nNo specific authentication or advanced privileges are explicitly detailed as prerequisites for initiating the attack vector, highlighting the exposure associated with network-accessible endpoints.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of the vulnerability is a stack buffer overflow residing in the data handling routines of IBM AIX 7.2, 7.3, and IBM PowerVM VIOS 4.1.\nWhen the vulnerable component processes incoming network traffic or input data, it fails to adequately validate the length of the supplied payload against the statically allocated stack buffer size.\nExploitation occurs when an attacker transmits a maliciously crafted input sequence exceeding the expected byte boundaries, causing data to overflow into adjacent memory regions on the call stack.\nThe attack flow begins with the attacker establishing network connectivity to the target service handling the vulnerable protocol or function.\nThe attacker then sends the oversized payload designed to overwrite critical stack variables, such as return addresses or frame pointers.\nUpon processing the excessive data, the application experiences abnormal termination or memory access violations when attempting to execute corrupted instruction pointers.\nThis behavior directly leads to a denial of service, halting normal operations of the affected subsystem or the entire operating system kernel environment.\nThe vulnerable component is exposed via network protocols interacting with the core operating system or virtualization layer.\nAffected software versions include IBM AIX 7.2, IBM AIX 7.3, and IBM PowerVM VIOS 4.1.\nThe post-exploitation impact is strictly localized to system availability disruption, manifesting as persistent crashes or service outages requiring administrative intervention."
}