CVE-2026-20908
Description
A flaw was found in the Intel NPU Driver for Windows. This time-of-check time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition vulnerability allows an unprivileged, authenticated local attacker to cause a denial of service. The attack has high complexity and requires no user interaction. This could lead to a significant impact on the availability of the system.
Statement
This CVE affects the Intel NPU Driver for Windows, which is a separate proprietary codebase from the Linux NPU driver (linux-npu-driver). Red Hat ships the Linux NPU driver in Fedora and EPEL, which uses the Linux DRM kernel subsystem and does not contain the Windows Ring 1 driver code where this TOCTOU race condition exists. Therefore, no Red Hat products or community builds are affected.
Mitigation
No mitigation is needed for Red Hat products or community builds. The vulnerable code exists only in the Intel NPU Driver for Windows, which is not shipped by Red Hat.
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Integrity,Other
Technical Impact: Alter Execution Logic; Unexpected State
The attacker can gain access to otherwise unauthorized resources.
Integrity,Other
Technical Impact: Modify Application Data; Modify Files or Directories; Modify Memory; Other
Race conditions such as this kind may be employed to gain read or write access to resources which are not normally readable or writable by the user in question.
Integrity,Other
Technical Impact: Other
The resource in question, or other resources (through the corrupted one), may be changed in undesirable ways by a malicious user.
Non-Repudiation
Technical Impact: Hide Activities
If a file or other resource is written in this method, as opposed to in a valid way, logging of the activity may not occur.
Non-Repudiation,Other
Technical Impact: Other
In some cases it may be possible to delete files a malicious user might not otherwise have access to, such as log files.
Other
Technical Impact: Unexpected State
The product may perform invalid actions when the resource is in an unexpected state.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not sure what something means? Check out our Security Glossary.
Want to get errata notifications? Sign up here.
