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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.6

CVE-2026-20709 json

Use of Default Cryptographic Key in the hardware for some Intel(R) Pentium(R) Processor Silver Series, Intel(R) Celeron(R) Processor J Seri…

published 2026-04-08 7 mo ago modified 2026-07-25 3 mo ago also EUVD-2026-20538

cvss
6.6
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 1%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Use of Default Cryptographic Key in the hardware for some Intel(R) Pentium(R) Processor Silver Series, Intel(R) Celeron(R) Processor J Series, Intel(R) Celeron(R) Processor N Series may allow an escalation of privilege. Hardware reverse engineer adversary with a privileged user combined with a high complexity attack may enable escalation of privilege. This result may potentially occur via physical access when attack requirements are present with special internal knowledge and requires no user interaction. The potential vulnerability may impact the confidentiality (high), integrity (none) and availability (none) of the vulnerable system, resulting in subsequent system confidentiality (high), integrity (high) and availability (none) impacts.

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-20709 updated cvss 6.6

microcode_ctl: Intel Processors: Escalation of privilege due to default cryptographic key

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 microcode_ctl Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 microcode_ctl Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 microcode_ctl Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 microcode_ctl Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 microcode_ctl
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
7 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.12% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 1% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 5.8 CVSS:4.0/AV:P/AC:H/AT:P/PR:H/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:N
CNA 3.1 6.6 CVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N
CNA 4.0 5.8 CVSS:4.0/AV:P/AC:H/AT:P/PR:H/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Affected products

  • n/a Intel(R) Pentium(R) Processor Silver Series, Intel(R) Celeron(R) Processor J Series, Intel(R) Celeron(R) Processor N Series may allow an escalation of privilege. Hardware reverse engineer adversary with a privileged user combined with a high complexity attack may enable escalation of privilege. This result may potentially occur via physical access when attack requirements are present with special internal knowledge and requires no user interaction. The potential vulnerability may impact the confidentiality (high), integrity (none) and availability (none) of the vulnerable system, resulting in subsequent system confidentiality (high), integrity (high) and availability (none) impacts.

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-1394 Use of Default Cryptographic Key

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.