CVE-2026-47489

A flaw was found in the NVIDIA GPU display driver. The driver's kernel mode layer does not properly preserve permissions on read-only memory. A local user can exploit this vulnerability to achieve privilege escalation or arbitrary code execution. Successful exploitation may also lead to data tampering, information disclosure, or a denial of service (DoS).

This vulnerability is rated as having Important impact because an authenticated local attacker can leverage kernel-level memory permission flaws to achieve arbitrary code execution in the context of the kernel, resulting in full system compromise. The issue only affects Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts that have the proprietary NVIDIA display driver package installed and the corresponding kernel module loaded for NVIDIA GPU hardware. Systems without NVIDIA hardware, or systems utilizing default open-source display drivers, are unaffected.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

To mitigate this vulnerability on systems where NVIDIA GPU compute or acceleration is not strictly required, prevent the driver kernel module from loading:

1. Create a configuration file in /etc/modprobe.d to blacklist the module:

# echo "blacklist nvidia" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf
# echo "install nvidia /bin/false" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf

2. If the driver is currently loaded, reboot the system to unload the module from the kernel.

Alternatively, on systems where the driver is required, restrict permissions on the /dev/nvidia* device nodes to administrative or designated service accounts to prevent untrusted local users from interacting with the driver interface.

Caveat: Blacklisting the driver disables hardware graphics acceleration, display output relying on the proprietary driver, and CUDA/compute workloads. A system restart is required for module blacklisting to take effect and will interrupt active processes.