CVE-2022-34666 is a vulnerability identified in the NVIDIA GPU Display Driver specifically affecting the NVIDIA Cloud Gaming components, including the guest driver and the Virtual GPU Manager, on both Windows and Linux platforms. The root cause is a NULL pointer dereference (CWE-476) in the kernel mode layer, which can be triggered by a local user with limited privileges (low-level local access) without requiring user interaction. Exploiting this flaw causes the affected driver to dereference a NULL pointer, leading to a denial of service (DoS) condition by crashing or destabilizing the GPU driver subsystem. This results in loss of GPU functionality and potentially system instability or crashes. The vulnerability affects all versions of the NVIDIA Cloud Gaming drivers prior to the August 2022 release, and no public exploits have been reported in the wild to date. The CVSS v3.1 base score is 6.5 (medium severity), reflecting that the attack vector is local (AV:L), requires low privileges (PR:L), no user interaction (UI:N), and impacts availability (A:H) without affecting confidentiality or integrity. The scope is changed (S:C), indicating that the vulnerability can affect components beyond the initially vulnerable driver, potentially impacting other system components relying on GPU virtualization. This vulnerability is particularly relevant for environments utilizing NVIDIA Cloud Gaming technology or virtual GPU infrastructure, such as cloud gaming providers, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments, and enterprises leveraging GPU virtualization for compute workloads. The denial of service impact can disrupt service availability, degrade user experience, and cause operational interruptions in affected systems.

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2022-34666 is the potential for denial of service on systems running NVIDIA Cloud Gaming or virtual GPU environments. This can lead to service outages in cloud gaming platforms, VDI solutions, and GPU-accelerated compute environments, affecting productivity and customer-facing services. Organizations in sectors such as gaming, media streaming, cloud service providers, and research institutions using GPU virtualization may experience operational disruptions. Although the vulnerability does not compromise confidentiality or integrity, the availability impact can cause significant downtime and financial loss, especially in high-demand or real-time service environments. Additionally, the requirement for local access means that insider threats or compromised user accounts could exploit this vulnerability to disrupt services. Given the growing adoption of GPU virtualization in European data centers and cloud infrastructures, this vulnerability poses a moderate risk that must be addressed promptly to maintain service reliability and operational continuity.

1. Immediate application of the August 2022 or later NVIDIA Cloud Gaming driver updates is critical to remediate this vulnerability. Organizations should prioritize patching all affected systems to eliminate the NULL pointer dereference flaw. 2. Restrict local access to systems running NVIDIA Cloud Gaming or virtual GPU managers by enforcing strict access controls and least privilege principles to reduce the risk of exploitation by low-privileged users. 3. Implement monitoring and alerting for GPU driver crashes or unusual system instability that could indicate attempted exploitation or triggering of this vulnerability. 4. For environments using virtual GPU infrastructure, consider isolating critical workloads and applying segmentation to limit the blast radius of any denial of service event. 5. Regularly audit and update GPU driver versions as part of vulnerability management processes to ensure timely deployment of security patches. 6. Educate system administrators and security teams about this specific vulnerability to improve detection and response capabilities. 7. If patching is delayed, consider temporary mitigations such as disabling or limiting access to the NVIDIA Cloud Gaming components where feasible, especially in high-risk environments.