An attacker who has root access to a partition can craft a special request to the partition firmware runtime in affected IBM PowerVM Hypervisor firmware versions, causing the runtime to crash and possibly corrupt memory. The fault does not provide elevated privileges or direct remote code execution; it primarily leads to a denial of service for the affected partition and potentially instability for the hypervisor. The weakness is listed as CWE‑191 but the exploitation path requires local root within a VM and does not allow the attacker to affect the hypervisor directly. This limits the scope to the vulnerable partition and its ability to coexist with other partitions on the hypervisor.

All IBM PowerVM Hypervisor firmware in the ranges FW1060.00‑FW1060.81, FW1110.00‑FW1110.31, FW1120.00‑FW1120.01, and FW950.00‑FW950.H3 are affected. The associated hardware includes IBM Power System models across Power 9, Power 10, and Power 11 families such as the E1180, S1122, E1150, S1024, S922, H922, and others listed in the advisory. Each model is tied to the specific firmware families and the recommended updates are listed for each family in the advisory.

The CVSS score is 5.1, indicating a medium impact. The EPSS score is not available, and the vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog, suggesting no evidence of widespread exploitation. The likely attack vector is local, requiring root privileges within a VM to send the crafted request to the firmware runtime. Consequently, the threat is limited to environments where an attacker can gain or already has local root within a partition.