VulnerabilityPublished 10 Feb 2026Updated 26 Feb 2026

CVE-2025-33030: Intel(R) NPU Drivers · Escalation of Privilege

Affects Intel(R) NPU DriversSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 2.0 Low.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 12:55 UTC

CVSS 4.0 base score

2.0Low

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 5% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Attack Requirements: Present
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None
Vulnerable system integrity: Low
Vulnerable system availability: None
Subsequent system confidentiality: None
Subsequent system integrity: None
Subsequent system availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable system is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or through terminal emulation (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., using social engineering techniques to trick a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: The attacker must take no measurable action to exploit the vulnerability. The attack requires no target-specific circumvention to exploit the vulnerability. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable system.
Attack Requirements: Present: The successful attack depends on the presence of specific deployment and execution conditions of the vulnerable system that enable the attack. These include: a race condition must be won to successfully exploit the vulnerability (the successfulness of the attack is conditioned on execution conditions that are not under full control of the attacker, or the attack may need to be launched multiple times against a single target before being successful); the attacker must inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim (e.g. vulnerabilities requiring an on-path attacker).
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker requires privileges that provide basic capabilities that are typically limited to settings and resources owned by a single low-privileged user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges has the ability to access only non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without interaction from any human user, other than the attacker.
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact to the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Subsequent System or all confidentiality impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Subsequent System or all integrity impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the Subsequent System or all availability impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v4.0 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 10 Feb 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Intel(R) NPU Drivers	Affected =See references	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2025-33030, organizations should: 1) Monitor Intel security advisories closely for patches or firmware updates addressing this vulnerability and apply them promptly once available. 2) Restrict local user privileges rigorously, ensuring that only trusted users have authenticated access to systems with Intel NPU drivers installed. 3) Implement strict access controls and user account management to minimize the risk of unauthorized local access. 4) Employ endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions to monitor for unusual local activity that could indicate exploitation attempts. 5) Conduct regular integrity checks and validation of AI workload outputs to detect anomalies potentially caused by data corruption. 6) Isolate critical AI processing environments to reduce exposure to unprivileged users. 7) Consider disabling or limiting NPU driver usage on systems where it is not essential. 8) Maintain comprehensive logging and auditing of local user actions to facilitate incident response if exploitation is suspected. These steps go beyond generic advice by focusing on controlling local access and monitoring AI-specific data integrity.

Description

Improper conditions check in some firmware for some Intel(R) NPU Drivers within Ring 3: User Applications may allow an escalation of privilege. Unprivileged software adversary with an authenticated user combined with a low complexity attack may enable data corruption. This result may potentially occur via local access when attack requirements are present without special internal knowledge and requires no user interaction. The potential vulnerability may impact the confidentiality (none), integrity (low) and availability (none) of the vulnerable system, resulting in subsequent system confidentiality (none), integrity (none) and availability (none) impacts.

Impact

The primary impact of CVE-2025-33030 is limited data integrity degradation due to potential data corruption within Intel NPU driver operations. While confidentiality and availability remain unaffected, the integrity compromise could influence AI processing results or system behavior relying on the NPU. Organizations utilizing Intel NPUs for AI acceleration, edge computing, or specialized workloads may experience subtle data inconsistencies or errors. The requirement for local authenticated access reduces the risk of widespread exploitation but raises concerns in multi-user or shared environments where privilege boundaries are critical. The vulnerability does not enable full privilege escalation to system or kernel level, limiting the scope of damage. However, in sensitive environments such as research labs, financial institutions, or critical infrastructure employing Intel NPUs, even minor data corruption could have downstream effects on decision-making or operational reliability. The absence of known exploits and the low CVSS score suggest a low immediate threat, but the vulnerability should be addressed to prevent potential misuse in targeted attacks.

References

intel.com/content/www/us/en/security-center/advisory/intel-sa-01403.html (opens in a new tab)

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 27 Feb 2026, 07:19 UTC

Technical details

References

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