Nvidia warns of a critical vulnerability in its Container Toolkit that could seriously affect cloud environments.
CVE-2024-0132 receives a CVSS score of nine out of 10. Nvidia shared a bulletin last Wednesday with more information about the vulnerability. That affects all versions of the Container Toolkit up to and including version 1.16.1, which is a time-of-check-time-of-use vulnerability.
With a specifically designed container image, malicious software can “escape” from a container and gain access to the host system, Nvidia writes. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability can lead to code execution, denial of service, escalation of privileges, disclosure of information and tampering with data. This does not affect use cases involving CDI.
Contaminated containers
According to security firm Wiz, at least one in three cloud environments running Nvidia Container Toolkit would be vulnerable. In a single-tenant environment, an attacker must convince the victim to install the malicious image on their workstation.
However, the risk of exploitation is greater for shared cloud environments that allow third-party container images. The attacker is then given much more freedom to infect other applications within the cluster.
Patch available
A patch is available and, as with any vulnerability, it is advisable to advance it as soon as possible. Nvidia Container Toolkit version v.1.16.2 closes the leak, as well as a less critical vulnerability (CVE-2024-0133). It is additionally recommended to update Nvidia GPU Operator to version 24.6.2.