CVE-2025-23266
Description
A flaw was found in the NVIDIA Container Toolkit. This vulnerability allows execution of arbitrary code with elevated permissions via improperly secured container initialization hooks. This can potentially lead to privilege escalation, data tampering, information disclosure, and denial of service.
Statement
RHEL AI is not affected because it uses CDI mode with NVIDIA Container Toolkit versions later than 1.17.5, which are not vulnerable, and does not rely on the enable-cuda-compat hook, thereby eliminating the attack vector entirely.
This vulnerability is marked as Important rather than Critical primarily due to its attack prerequisites and execution context, despite its high CVSS score. While the vulnerability allows privilege escalation via the enable-cuda-compat hook in the NVIDIA Container Toolkit, it is not exploitable remotely—it requires local access and low privileges within a containerized environment. This significantly reduces its initial attack surface compared to a truly critical vulnerability that could be exploited over the network without authentication.
Mitigation
No mitigation is currently available that meets Red Hat Product Security’s standards for usability, deployment, applicability, or stability.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 9 | N/A | 9 |
| Attack Vector | Adjacent Network | N/A | Adjacent Network |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | Low |
| Privileges Required | Low | N/A | Low |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Changed | N/A | Changed |
| Confidentiality | High | N/A | High |
| Integrity Impact | High | N/A | High |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Integrity,Confidentiality,Availability,Access Control
Technical Impact: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
There is the potential for arbitrary code execution with privileges of the vulnerable program.
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart
The program could be redirected to the wrong files, potentially triggering a crash or hang when the targeted file is too large or does not have the expected format.
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Files or Directories
The program could send the output of unauthorized files to the attacker.
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