CVE-2026-47518

A flaw was found in the NVIDIA GPU Display Driver. An incorrect permission assignment for a critical resource in a secure microcontroller component allows an attacker with privileged local access to modify restricted protected memory. This vulnerability may allow an attacker to achieve arbitrary code execution and further privilege escalation on the host system.

On Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems deploying proprietary NVIDIA GPU display drivers, this vulnerability is rated as Moderate impact because exploitation requires pre-existing local administrative privileges and satisfies complex execution conditions, preventing remote or unprivileged abuse. Although tampering with restricted microcontroller memory can lead to code execution and system compromise, an attacker must already possess elevated permissions on the host to interact with the vulnerable hardware component. Standard installations without dedicated NVIDIA hardware or systems running open-source drivers are not affected by this flaw.

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.

Prevent the NVIDIA GPU display driver kernel module from loading by blacklisting it in the modprobe configuration:

1. Create a configuration file to blacklist the driver module:

echo "blacklist nvidia" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf

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

2. If additional NVIDIA driver modules are present (such as nvidia_modeset or nvidia_uvm), append them to the blacklist configuration:

echo "blacklist nvidia_modeset" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf

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

3. Warning: A system restart is required for changes to take effect and to ensure currently loaded driver modules are unloaded from memory.

Caveat: Applying this mitigation will disable NVIDIA GPU hardware acceleration, display outputs, and GPU compute capabilities across the system.