CVE-2026-47566

A flaw was found in nvidia-driver. An unprivileged local attacker can trigger specific error-handling routines in the kernel-mode driver layer, causing memory to leak instead of being freed. Over time, this memory exhaustion can destabilize the operating system and result in a Denial of Service (DoS).

This vulnerability is rated as Moderate because exploitation requires local access with valid user credentials and is restricted to denial of service, with no impact on data confidentiality or integrity. On Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems running the proprietary NVIDIA display driver, unprivileged local users can trigger error-handling routines that fail to release allocated memory. Over sustained execution, these leaks exhaust kernel resources and cause system unresponsiveness.

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 kernel module from loading by creating a modprobe configuration file:

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

Caveats: Disabling this module prevents the system from initializing the NVIDIA GPU, which disables graphical desktop acceleration, CUDA compute workloads, and related hardware features.

Warning: A system reboot is required for the configuration to take effect if the kernel module is already loaded.