NVIDIA ForgePtr and NvRoot vulnerabilities expose Linux driver to root escalation

Security researchers at Stealthium have disclosed two significant vulnerabilities, ForgePtr (CVE-2026-47501) and NvRoot (CVE-2026-47591), affecting NVIDIA's open kernel modules for Linux. These flaws have reportedly existed within the driver code for approximately four years and carry a CVSS rating of 7.8.

The vulnerabilities pose a critical risk to multi-tenant environments, particularly cloud providers offering GPU slices. ForgePtr enables an unprivileged process within a GPU container to escalate privileges to root on the host, while NvRoot allows the GPU to overwrite files that the operating system has designated as read-only.

Technical breakdown of ForgePtr and NvRoot

• ForgePtr (CVE-2026-47501): Enables an unprivileged process running inside a GPU container to achieve root-level access on the host machine.
• NvRoot (CVE-2026-47591): Permits the GPU to bypass OS-level protections by rewriting files marked as read-only by any tenant on the node.
• Affected Software: The flaws reside in the NVIDIA open kernel modules and have been present for four years.
• Available Fixes: NvRoot is addressed in driver versions 610.57.04, 595.91.07, and 580.178.04, while ForgePtr requires driver version 615.71.09.

Why it matters

These vulnerabilities are particularly dangerous for cloud computing and AI infrastructure providers where multiple users share hardware resources. The disclosure of these two flaws is only the beginning, as 25 additional security disclosures targeting the NVIDIA AI runtime stack are expected to follow.