A critical 9.5/10 severity vulnerability (CVE-2026-97631) in TianoCore EDK II, the open-source UEFI firmware codebase used by virtually all major server vendors, allows pre-boot code execution via a memory-corruption flaw in its ICMP component. Discovered by researchers at Anthropic and Google, the vulnerability could let attackers execute malicious code before Secure Boot and other firmware defenses load, potentially enabling persistent boot-level compromise.
Background
UEFI firmware is the low-level software that initializes hardware during the boot process, sitting between the OS and the machine's hardware. TianoCore EDK II has become the de facto standard reference implementation for UEFI across the server industry, making vulnerabilities in it especially widespread.
- Source
- Ars Technica
- Published
- Oct 28, 2026 at 04:25 AM
- Score
- 9.0 / 10