Nvidia discloses security flaws in its GPU drivers for Windows and Linux

Nvidia discloses security flaws in its GPU drivers for Windows and Linux

Nvidia discloses security flaws in its GPU drivers for Windows and Linux

After the release of their Geforce 461.09 driver update, Nvidia disclosed several GPU Display Driver vulnerabilities which impacted many of the company’s drivers for both Windows and Linux, confirming that these faults “may lead to denial of service, escalation of privileges, data tampering, or information disclosure.”

While we are grateful to Nvidia for disclosing these vulnerabilities, we will note that Nvidia did not disclose any of these fixes within their Geforce 461.09 release notes. This prevented early reporting on the driver from containing the real reason why Nvidia released a new mainstream WHQL Geforce driver which lacked any new game-specific optimisations.

Come on Nvidia, why are you hiding such important details like that from your driver release notes? It is not a coincidence that this disclosure came on the same day as the fix, so why didn’t you disclose the fix in your driver release notes. Surely these security fixes are important enough to mention in your consumer-facing documentation? If nothing else, disclosing these fixes in your release notes would convince more of your users to update their drivers and secure their systems. 

 
With these vulnerabilities in mind, Windows/Linux users of Nvidia graphics cards should update their drivers to versions 461.09/460.32.03 as soon as they can. Additional information about these vulnerabilities is available on Nvidia’s Customer Support website.    

This disclosure has turned Nvidia’s Geforce 461.09 driver from a minor release to a major one, assuming that you are security conscious. There is more to this driver than minor bug fixes…

Nvidia discloses security flaws in its GPU drivers for Windows and Linux  

461.09 WHQL Download Links

Windows 10 – 64 Bit

You can join the discussion on Nvidia’s new Geforce 461.09 WHQL driver on the OC3D Forums. Â