Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-81657 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-81657 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-81657?
- Critical severity, with a CVSS score of 9.8, published 18 September 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- IBM Guardium Data Protection 12.2.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-81657?
- No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.
- How is CVE-2026-81657 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a network appliance.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-81657?
- Check whether you run IBM Guardium Data Protection at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
CVE-2026-81657 is an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability stemming from unsafe deserialization of untrusted data (CWE-502). The attack requires only network access and no authentication; a crafted malicious serialized object can trigger arbitrary code execution with full system privileges. No user interaction is required.
Affected products
- IBM Guardium Data Protection 12.2
Timeline
- 2026-09-18: disclosed