CVE-2026-84250

Summary

The vulnerability stems from a hard-coded recovery key in IBM Guardium's pkcrypto passkey component, allowing local attackers to recover root passwords and escalate privileges. This weak cryptographic protection creates a persistent backdoor that can be exploited without authentication.

Exploitability

Exploitation requires local access to the system with minimal preconditions, making it highly feasible for attackers who already have user-level access.

Blast radius

If exploited, this vulnerability could allow attackers to gain full root access to Guardium systems, potentially compromising all protected data and enabling further lateral movement within the network.

Detection

No reliable host or network indicator is derivable from the published description.

Prioritized remediation

Apply the latest available patch or upgrade to IBM Guardium Data Protection 12.3 or later to address the hard-coded recovery key vulnerability.

Analysis generated locally by garnet-coder (no data left the box). AI-assisted — verify against primary sources before acting.