---
id: CVE-2026-20709
title: >-
  Use of Default Cryptographic Key in the hardware for some Intel(R) Pentium(R)
  Processor Silver Series, Intel(R) Celeron(R) Processor J Series, Intel(R)
  Celeron(R) Processor N Series may allow an escalation of privilege
summary: >-
  Use of Default Cryptographic Key in the hardware for some Intel(R) Pentium(R)
  Processor Silver Series, Intel(R) Celeron(R) Processor J Series, Intel(R)
  Celeron(R) Processor N Series may allow an escalation of privilege. Hardware
  reverse …
severity: medium
cvss: 6.6
cvssVector: 'CVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N'
cwe:
  - CWE-1394
published: '2026-04-08'
updated: '2026-07-25'
source: NVD
sourceUrl: 'https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-20709'
references:
  - url: >-
      https://intel.com/content/www/us/en/security-center/advisory/intel-sa-00609.html
    label: secure@intel.com
tags:
  - nvd
epss: 0.00111
epssPercentile: 0.01515
ingestedAt: '2026-07-26T10:11:58.392Z'
---

## Overview

Use of Default Cryptographic Key in the hardware for some Intel(R) Pentium(R) Processor Silver Series, Intel(R) Celeron(R) Processor J Series, Intel(R) Celeron(R) Processor N Series may allow an escalation of privilege. Hardware reverse engineer adversary with a privileged user combined with a high complexity attack may enable escalation of privilege. This result may potentially occur via physical access when attack requirements are present with special internal knowledge and requires no user interaction. The potential vulnerability may impact the confidentiality (high), integrity (none) and availability (none) of the vulnerable system, resulting in subsequent system confidentiality (high), integrity (high) and availability (none) impacts.

## Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.