CVE Catalog

CVE-2025-20028

High
Published: Translated: NVD NIST

Summary

A time-of-check time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition in the WheaERST SMM module for some Intel reference platforms may allow privilege escalation. The attack requires a privileged system software adversary and high complexity, but no user interaction or special internal knowledge. The vulnerability may impact confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the system.

Risk Assessment

The risk to the organization includes potential privilege escalation by a local privileged attacker, which could compromise confidentiality, integrity, and availability. High attack complexity reduces likelihood, but impacts can be severe.

Recommendation

Apply firmware updates provided by Intel for affected reference platforms. Additionally, restrict local access to trusted users and monitor for unusual activity.

Related vulnerabilities

Original NVD description (English source)

Time-of-check time-of-use race condition in the WheaERST SMM module for some Intel(R) reference platforms may allow an escalation of privilege. System software adversary with a privileged user combined with a high 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 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.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS