# CVE-2020-12988: Denial of service in 1st/2nd/3rd Gen AMD EPYC™ Processors

> A malicious attacker can cause a denial of service by hanging the system during reboot on AMD EPYC processors.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 11 Jun 2021
- **Updated:** 16 Sep 2024

## What is CVE-2020-12988?

CVE-2020-12988 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Amd Epyc 7232p Firmware, published on 11 Jun 2021. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A potential denial of service (DoS) vulnerability exists in the integrated chipset that may allow a malicious attacker to hang the system when it is rebooted.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-12988?

It affects 61 products.


Products: Amd Epyc 7001 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7002 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7003 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7232p Firmware, Amd Epyc 7251 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7252 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7261 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7262 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7272 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7281 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7282 Firmware, Amd Epyc 72f3 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7301 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7302 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7302p Firmware, Amd Epyc 7313 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7313p Firmware, Amd Epyc 7343 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7351 Firmware, Amd Epyc 7351p Firmware and 41 more.

## How do I fix CVE-2020-12988?

No fix has been published for CVE-2020-12988 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2020-12988 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-12988 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Amd Epyc 7232p Firmware

- [CVE-2021-26340](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-26340/): A malicious hypervisor in conjunction with an unprivileged attacker process inside an SEV/SEV-ES guest VM may fail to flush the Translation (high 8.4)
- [CVE-2021-26398](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-26398/): Memory corruption in 1st Gen EPYC (high 7.8)
- [CVE-2021-26331](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-26331/): Code injection in 1st Gen AMD EPYC™ (high 7.8)
- [CVE-2021-26335](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-26335/): Code injection in Athlon™ Series (high 7.8)
- [CVE-2023-20578](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-20578/): Race condition in AMD EPYC™ 7001 Processors (high 7.5)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2020-12988 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2020-12988 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Amd Epyc 7232p Firmware, published on 11 Jun 2021. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-12988 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Amd Epyc 7232p Firmware. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-12988/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-12988/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-12988
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-12988
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2020-12988

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From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-12988/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.