CVE-2026-16141 PUBLISHED

OpenBMC IPMI Authentication Bypass via Default userKey and Stale Challenge Value

Assigner: runZero
Reserved: 17.07.2026 Published: 15.09.2026 Updated: 15.09.2026

OpenBMC's IPMI implementation, phosphor-net-ipmid, contains a logic flaw in which an unauthenticated client can force the RAKP Message 1 handler to return before it overwrites the authentication object's constructor defaults. The IPMI service then accepts a RAKP Message 3 whose HMAC is computed with the constant 20-byte 'userKey' initialized from the string '0penBmc' and an often-predictable 'bmcRandomNum'. Several downstream vendors implement phosphor-net-ipmid as their IPMI stack, such as NVIDIA and H3C.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS Score: 8.1

Product Status

Vendor OpenBMC
Product phosphor-net-ipmid
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0 to ba6efc502e6b1fabb8ed1ca677ae5eedd64b6361 (incl.)

Credits

  • HD Moore of runZero finder
  • Gadi Evron of Knostic finder
  • Tod Beardsley of runZero coordinator

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-798 Use of Hard-coded Credentials CWE
  • CWE-457 Use of Uninitialized Variable CWE