Intel Xeon Scalable Processors race condition

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical has been found in Intel Xeon Scalable Processors. The impacted element is an unknown function. This manipulation causes race condition. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-20707. The attack can only be executed locally. There is no exploit available.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability has been found in Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (version now known) and classified as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is some unknown processing. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a race condition vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-362. The product contains a code sequence that can run concurrently with other code, and the code sequence requires temporary, exclusive access to a shared resource, but a timing window exists in which the shared resource can be modified by another code sequence that is operating concurrently. As an impact it is known to affect availability. The summary by CVE is:

Hardware logic contains race conditions for some 3rd Gen Intel(R) Xeon(R) Scalable Processors within Ring 3: unprivileged software may allow a denial of service. Unprivileged software adversary with an authenticated user combined with a high complexity attack may enable denial of service. This result may potentially occur via local access when attack requirements are not present with special internal knowledge and requires no user interaction. The potential vulnerability may impact the confidentiality (none), integrity (none) and availability (high) of the vulnerable system, resulting in subsequent system confidentiality (none), integrity (none) and availability (high) impacts.

It is possible to read the advisory at intel.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2026-20707 since 12/18/2025. The exploitation appears to be easy. Attacking locally is a requirement. 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 08/11/2026).

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

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Productinfo

Type

• Chip Software

Vendor

• Intel

Name

• Xeon Scalable Processors

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://www.intel.com/

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