CVE-2026-47557

A flaw was found in the NVIDIA GPU display driver. An unprivileged local user could exploit a vulnerability in the kernel mode layer to cause a NULL pointer dereference (an invalid memory access). Successful exploitation can lead to a system crash, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).

This vulnerability is rated as Moderate because exploitation requires local access by an authenticated user and is limited to causing a denial of service through a system crash, without compromising confidentiality or integrity. On Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, the proprietary NVIDIA GPU driver is not installed or enabled by default and is only present when specialized NVIDIA hardware and corresponding driver packages are explicitly deployed. Consequently, exposure is restricted to multi-user environments utilizing NVIDIA GPUs where unprivileged users have access to interact with the display driver's kernel interface.

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 issue, prevent the NVIDIA kernel module from loading if GPU acceleration is not required:

1. Prevent the module from loading by creating a configuration file in /etc/modprobe.d/:

echo "install nvidia /bin/true" > /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf

2. If the module is currently loaded, unload it:

modprobe -r nvidia

Caveats: Disabling the NVIDIA kernel module disables GPU hardware acceleration, graphical output relying on the proprietary driver, and CUDA compute workloads. If active processes or dependencies prevent dynamically unloading the driver, a system restart is required.