CVE-2026-16697 in OPENBMC
Summary
by MITRE • 11/08/2026
IBM Power Systems Firmware FW1060.00 through FW1060.81, OP940.00 through OP940.A2, OP910.00 through OP910.95, and OP940.00 through OP940.82 could allow a remote attacker to cause a denial of service due to improper restriction of excessive computational resources.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/08/2026
The vulnerability identified in IBM Power Systems firmware versions FW1060.00 through FW1060.81, as well as various OP940 and OP910 series firmwares up to their respective maximum listed revisions, represents a significant risk related to resource management within the system's hypervisor or underlying infrastructure components. This flaw is categorized under CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling, which describes scenarios where an application fails to properly restrict the amount of resources that can be consumed by a single user or process. In this specific context, the improper restriction of excessive computational resources allows a remote attacker to exploit weaknesses in how the system handles incoming requests or processes data from external sources. The core technical flaw lies in the absence of adequate rate limiting, quota enforcement, or input validation mechanisms designed to cap the processing load imposed by any single entity interacting with the affected systems.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability enables a remote denial-of-service attack without requiring authentication on certain management interfaces or services that are exposed to network traffic. An attacker can craft specific requests or streams of data that trigger inefficient code paths within the firmware's handling logic, causing the system to consume disproportionate amounts of CPU cycles, memory, or I/O bandwidth. This resource exhaustion leads to a degradation in service availability for legitimate users and other virtual machines hosted on the same physical hardware. The impact is particularly severe because IBM Power Systems often serve as critical infrastructure hosts for enterprise workloads; a denial-of-service event can result in significant business disruption, loss of productivity, and potential data integrity issues if active transactions are interrupted abruptly due to system unresponsiveness.
The attack vector aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique T1499: Endpoint Denial of Service, specifically under methods involving resource exhaustion or flooding. By leveraging this vulnerability, an adversary can effectively neutralize the availability component of the CIA triad for systems running the affected firmware versions. The remote nature of the exploit means that physical access is not required, and if the vulnerable services are accessible over a network segment without sufficient perimeter controls, they present a direct path to disruption. This highlights the importance of securing management interfaces and ensuring that all external-facing components have robust resource governance policies in place.
Mitigation strategies primarily involve applying the latest firmware updates provided by IBM, which address these specific flaws by implementing stricter limits on computational resource allocation per request or session. Organizations should also implement network-level controls such as rate limiting at the firewall or load balancer level to mitigate the impact of any potential exploitation attempts before they reach the vulnerable system components. Additionally, reviewing and hardening access control lists for management interfaces ensures that only authorized personnel can interact with services that might be susceptible to resource exhaustion attacks. Regular monitoring of system performance metrics can also help in detecting anomalous spikes in resource usage that may indicate an ongoing attack attempt, allowing for rapid incident response before significant damage occurs.