Intel System Update Utility up to 16.0.11 Firmware Update permission assignment

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, has been found in Intel System Update Utility up to 16.0.11. This vulnerability affects unknown code of the component Firmware Update Handler. The manipulation leads to permission assignment. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2025-35999. Local access is required to approach this attack. No exploit exists. It is advisable to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Intel System Update Utility up to 16.0.11 and classified as critical. This issue affects an unknown functionality of the component Firmware Update Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a permission assignment vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-732. The product specifies permissions for a security-critical resource in a way that allows that resource to be read or modified by unintended actors. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

Incorrect permission assignment for critical resource for some System Firmware Update Utility (SysFwUpdt) for Intel(R) Server Boards and Intel(R) Server Systems Based before version 16.0.12. within Ring 3: User Applications may allow an escalation of privilege. System software adversary with a privileged user combined with a low complexity attack may enable escalation of privilege. This result may potentially occur via local access when attack requirements are present without special internal knowledge and requires passive user interaction. The potential vulnerability may impact the confidentiality (high), integrity (high) and availability (high) of the vulnerable system, resulting in subsequent system confidentiality (none), integrity (none) and availability (none) impacts.

It is possible to read the advisory at intel.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2025-35999 since 04/15/2025. The exploitation is known to be easy. Attacking locally is a requirement. Additional levels of successful authentication are required for exploitation. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 02/10/2026).

Upgrading to version 16.0.12 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• Intel

Name

• System Update Utility

Version

• 16.0.0
• 16.0.1
• 16.0.2
• 16.0.3
• 16.0.4
• 16.0.5
• 16.0.6
• 16.0.7
• 16.0.8
• 16.0.9
• 16.0.10
• 16.0.11

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://www.intel.com/

CPE 2.3info

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