Enterprise IBM product (DataStage on Cloud Pak for Data) with multi-tenant impact; can enable cross-tenant tampering and disrupt services across organizations.
CVE-2026-81540
Authenticated path traversal in IBM DataStage allows cross-tenant ruleset overwrite.
Is CVE-2026-81540 being exploited?
Not confirmed. CVE-2026-81540 does not appear in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, which records only exploitation that has been observed and reported publicly. That is evidence of absence of a report, not evidence the flaw is unattacked. EPSS currently estimates a 0.39% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.
How severe is CVE-2026-81540?
CVE-2026-81540 is rated High with a CVSS score of 8.5. Severity describes how bad exploitation would be, not how likely it is: pair it with exploitation evidence before deciding what to patch first.
Is there a patch for CVE-2026-81540?
Not known from our data. No patch reference has been recorded for CVE-2026-81540, which is not the same as no patch existing — a fix may have shipped without a tagged reference, or after this record was written. The vendor advisory is the only authority on whether a fix exists, and mitigations may be available regardless.
What does CVE-2026-81540 affect?
CVE-2026-81540 affects IBM DataStage on Cloud Pak for Data 5.4.0.0, Cloud Pak for Data deployments running DataStage. Confirm the exact affected versions against the vendor advisory before deciding you are exposed.
What should I do about CVE-2026-81540?
Apply vendor patch/workaround ASAP; restrict access, rotate credentials, and audit ruleset files.
Exploitation status reflects CISA's KEV catalog as we last synced it. Check the catalog directly.
Authenticated remote attacker can traverse file paths to overwrite other tenants' ruleset files, enabling job/rules tampering, data corruption, DoS, or privilege escalation.
Immediate action required
- affected5.4.0.0
As published in the CVE Program record. A version outside these ranges is not a statement that it is unaffected — vendors sometimes understate a range, and distribution-backported builds carry upstream numbers that do not reflect what was patched into them.