Intel QuickAssist Adapter 8960 software up to 1.12 untrusted pointer dereference

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical was found in Intel QuickAssist Adapter 8960 software up to 1.12. Impacted is an unknown function. Such manipulation leads to untrusted pointer dereference. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2026-20738. An attack has to be approached locally. There is no exploit available. Upgrading the affected component is advised.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Intel QuickAssist Adapter 8960 software up to 1.12. It has been rated as critical. Affected by this issue is an unknown function. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a untrusted pointer dereference vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-822. The product obtains a value from an untrusted source, converts this value to a pointer, and dereferences the resulting pointer. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

Untrusted pointer dereference for some Intel(R) QuickAssist Adapter 8960 software before version 1.13 within Ring 3: User Applications may allow an escalation of privilege. Unprivileged software adversary with an authenticated user combined with a low complexity attack may enable escalation of privilege. This result may potentially occur via local access when attack requirements are not present without special internal knowledge and requires no 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.

The advisory is shared for download at intel.com. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2026-20738 since 12/04/2025. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack needs to be approached locally. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The current price for an exploit might be approx. USD $0-$5k (estimation calculated on 05/12/2026).

Upgrading to version 1.13 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• Intel

Name

• QuickAssist Adapter 8960 software

Version

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 1.2
• 1.3
• 1.4
• 1.5
• 1.6
• 1.7
• 1.8
• 1.9
• 1.10
• 1.11
• 1.12

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://www.intel.com/

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