CVE-2025-23279 is a high-severity vulnerability identified in NVIDIA GPU Display Drivers, specifically affecting the R575 version of the NVIDIA .run installer for Linux and Solaris platforms. The vulnerability is categorized as a Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition (CWE-367). This type of race condition occurs when a system checks a condition (such as permissions or resource state) and then uses the resource based on that check, but the state changes between the check and the use, allowing an attacker to exploit the timing gap. In this case, the race condition exists within the NVIDIA GPU driver installation process, which runs with elevated privileges. An attacker with limited privileges (PR:L) but local access could exploit this race condition to escalate their privileges, potentially achieving code execution with higher privileges. The CVSS v3.1 base score is 7.0, indicating a high severity, with the vector string CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H. This means the attack requires local access (AV:L), high attack complexity (AC:H), low privileges (PR:L), no user interaction (UI:N), and impacts confidentiality, integrity, and availability at a high level (C:H/I:H/A:H). Successful exploitation could lead to arbitrary code execution, privilege escalation, information disclosure, denial of service, or data tampering. Although no known exploits are currently reported in the wild, the vulnerability's nature and impact make it a significant risk for affected systems. The lack of available patches at the time of publication increases the urgency for mitigation and monitoring. The vulnerability affects Linux and Solaris systems using the specified NVIDIA driver version, which are commonly found in high-performance computing, scientific research, and certain enterprise environments.

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a substantial risk, especially those relying on Linux or Solaris servers equipped with NVIDIA GPUs for compute-intensive tasks such as AI research, data analytics, scientific simulations, and graphical workloads. Exploitation could allow attackers to gain elevated privileges on critical systems, leading to unauthorized access to sensitive data, disruption of services, or manipulation of computational results. The high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability means that data breaches, service outages, or corrupted outputs could occur, affecting business continuity and compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR. Organizations in sectors like finance, research institutions, telecommunications, and government agencies that utilize NVIDIA GPUs in their infrastructure are particularly vulnerable. Additionally, the requirement for local access means that insider threats or attackers who have already compromised lower-privileged accounts could leverage this vulnerability to deepen their foothold. The absence of known exploits currently provides a window for proactive defense, but the high severity score underscores the need for immediate attention to prevent potential exploitation.

Given the absence of an official patch at the time of this report, European organizations should implement several specific mitigation strategies beyond generic advice: 1) Restrict local access strictly to trusted users and processes, employing strong access controls and monitoring to detect unauthorized attempts. 2) Employ mandatory access control frameworks (e.g., SELinux, AppArmor) to limit the privileges of the NVIDIA installer and related processes, reducing the impact of any race condition exploitation. 3) Use file system and process monitoring tools to detect unusual activity during driver installation or updates, including unexpected file modifications or process executions. 4) Schedule driver installations and updates during maintenance windows with minimal user activity to reduce race condition exploitation opportunities. 5) Isolate systems running vulnerable NVIDIA drivers from critical network segments to limit lateral movement in case of compromise. 6) Maintain up-to-date backups and implement integrity verification mechanisms for critical data and system files to enable recovery from tampering or denial-of-service attacks. 7) Engage with NVIDIA support channels to obtain early access to patches or workarounds and apply them promptly once available. 8) Consider temporary mitigation by using alternative GPU drivers or configurations that do not rely on the vulnerable installer, if feasible. 9) Conduct regular security audits and penetration testing focusing on privilege escalation vectors related to GPU drivers and installation processes.