Medium [CVE-2026-20908] Intel NPU Driver for Windows: Denial of Service via time-of-check time-of-use race condition
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-20908.
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Summary
Time-of-check time-of-use race condition for the Intel(R) NPU Driver for Windows for all versions within Ring 1: Device Drivers may allow a denial of service. Unprivileged software adversary with an authenticated user combined with a high complexity attack may enable denial of service.
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 (high) of the vulnerable system, resulting in subsequent system confidentiality (none), integrity (none) and availability (none) impacts.
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 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. Red Hat severity: Moderate — CVSS 5.3 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H).
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 1 hour ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 1 hour ago·verify at source
Mitigation checklist
- 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.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 1 hour ago·verify at source
Discussion(0)
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