CVE-2026-47594

A flaw was found in the NVIDIA GPU display driver. A local unprivileged user can trigger a use-after-free condition—where memory is accessed after it has been released—by submitting a specific sequence of driver commands. Successful exploitation could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code, escalate privileges, cause a denial of service (DoS), or access sensitive data.

This vulnerability is rated as Important severity for Red Hat Enterprise Linux because an authenticated local attacker can leverage driver memory corruption to achieve root privilege escalation and complete control over the host. The issue specifically affects systems configured with NVIDIA GPU drivers, where device nodes are typically reachable by unprivileged users and workloads requiring graphical or compute acceleration. While exploitation requires existing local access, the potential blast radius encompasses complete compromise of system confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

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, prevent the NVIDIA kernel module from loading on systems where GPU acceleration or compute is not strictly necessary.

1. Create a configuration file in /etc/modprobe.d/ to blacklist and disable loading of the driver:

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

2. Alternatively, on systems where GPU functionality is required for designated workloads, restrict access permissions on NVIDIA device nodes (/dev/nvidia*, /dev/nvidiactl, /dev/nvidia-uvm) to trusted administrative groups or dedicated service accounts to prevent unprivileged users from sending driver commands.

Caveat: Disabling the kernel module prevents hardware-accelerated rendering and GPU computing functionality across the host. If the driver is currently loaded into the running kernel, a system reboot is required for blacklisting to take effect.