# CVE-2026-20731: Denial of service in Intel(R) NPU Driver

> An unprivileged local attacker can cause a denial of service in the Intel NPU Driver via improper buffer restrictions.

- **Severity:** Medium 6.9 (`CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 11 Aug 2026
- **Updated:** 12 Aug 2026
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2026-20731, GHSA-363q-22g7-fmmm

## What is CVE-2026-20731?

CVE-2026-20731 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Intel(R) NPU Driver, published on 11 Aug 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

Improper buffer restrictions for the Intel(R) NPU Driver for all versions within Ring 3: User Applications may allow a denial of service. Unprivileged software adversary with an authenticated user combined with a low complexity attack may enable denial of service. This result may potentially occur via local access when attack requirements are not present without special internal knowledge and requires no user interaction. The potential vulnerability may impact the confidentiality (none), integrity (low) and availability (high) of the vulnerable system, resulting in subsequent system confidentiality (none), integrity (none) and availability (none) impacts.

Weakness: CWE-119 (Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-20731?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Intel Neural Processing Unit Driver.

## How do I fix CVE-2026-20731?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2026-20731 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-20731 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Intel(R) NPU Driver

- [CVE-2026-20769](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20769/): Denial of service in Intel(R) NPU Driver (medium 6.9)
- [CVE-2026-20783](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20783/): Denial of service in Intel(R) NPU Driver (medium 6.9)
- [CVE-2026-20786](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20786/): Denial of service in Intel(R) NPU Driver (medium 6.9)
- [CVE-2026-20908](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20908/): Race condition in Intel(R) NPU Driver for Windows (medium 5.8)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-20731 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-20731 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Intel(R) NPU Driver, published on 11 Aug 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-20731 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Intel(R) NPU Driver. 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-2026-20731/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20731/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-20731
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-20731
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-20731

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From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20731/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.