Hackers Could Exploit NVIDIA GPU Toolkit Flaw to Hijack Host Systems
A newly discovered vulnerability in the NVIDIA Container Toolkit impacts all AI applications utilizing it to access GPU resources, affecting both cloud and on-premise environments.
CVE-2024-0132: Threat to Cloud and AI Platforms
The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-0132, allows attackers to escape from containers and gain full control over the host system, enabling the execution of commands or exfiltration of sensitive data. This toolkit is widely used in AI-focused platforms and comes pre-installed on many virtual machine images that rely on NVIDIA hardware.
According to Wiz Research, 35% of cloud environments could be at risk of attacks exploiting this vulnerability.
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Source: Wiz
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Container Escape Flaw
The vulnerability has been assigned a critical-severity score of 9.0. It affects NVIDIA Container Toolkit 1.16.1 and earlier versions, as well as GPU Operator 24.6.1 and older.
This flaw arises from the lack of secure isolation between the GPU and the host system, enabling attackers to mount sensitive parts of the host filesystem or access runtime resources such as Unix sockets.
While most filesystems are mounted with read-only permissions, writable Unix sockets like ‘docker.sock’ and ‘containerd.sock’ remain accessible, allowing attackers to execute commands on the host.
An attacker could exploit this flaw using a malicious container image and gain control over the host, either by sharing GPU resources or running a compromised image.
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Vulnerability Timeline
Researchers at Wiz discovered the vulnerability and reported it to NVIDIA on September 1st, 2024. NVIDIA acknowledged the issue and released a fix on September 26th.
Recommended Action
Users are advised to update to the patched versions:
- NVIDIA Container Toolkit 1.16.2
- NVIDIA GPU Operator 24.6.2
While technical details for exploiting the vulnerability remain private for now, Wiz plans to release more information once organizations have had enough time to implement mitigations.
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Source: bleepingcomputer.com