CVE-2019-5696 in Virtual GPU Manager
Summary
by MITRE
NVIDIA Virtual GPU Manager, all versions, contains a vulnerability in which the provision of an incorrectly sized buffer by a guest VM leads to GPU out-of-bound access, which may lead to a denial of service.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/09/2019
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2019-5696 resides within NVIDIA Virtual GPU Manager software across all affected versions, representing a critical flaw in virtualization security architecture. This issue manifests when guest virtual machines provide buffers with incorrect sizing parameters to the hypervisor's GPU management layer, creating a condition where memory access operations extend beyond allocated boundaries. The root cause stems from insufficient input validation and buffer size verification mechanisms within the virtual GPU implementation, specifically affecting how the system handles memory allocation requests from virtualized environments. Such a flaw represents a fundamental breakdown in memory safety protocols that are essential for maintaining the isolation and stability of virtualized computing environments.
The technical execution of this vulnerability occurs through guest VM memory operations that manipulate buffer sizes in ways that bypass normal validation checks within the NVIDIA Virtual GPU Manager. When a guest VM submits a malformed buffer size parameter, the underlying GPU management system fails to properly validate the request before proceeding with memory allocation and access operations. This leads to out-of-bounds memory access patterns that can cause the GPU subsystem to crash or become unresponsive, ultimately resulting in denial of service conditions that affect both the compromised virtual machine and potentially other VMs sharing the same physical GPU resources. The vulnerability operates at the intersection of virtualization management and hardware abstraction layers, where improper boundary checking allows malicious or malformed input to traverse security boundaries.
The operational impact of CVE-2019-5696 extends beyond simple service disruption to encompass potential system stability issues and resource exhaustion scenarios within virtualized environments. Organizations utilizing NVIDIA virtual GPU solutions for desktop virtualization, cloud computing, or high-performance computing clusters face significant risk from this vulnerability, as it can be exploited to cause cascading failures across multiple virtual machines. The denial of service condition affects not only the targeted guest VM but may also compromise the overall virtualization platform's availability, potentially leading to business disruption and loss of productivity. Attackers could leverage this vulnerability to systematically degrade virtualization infrastructure performance or to create persistent availability issues that require manual intervention to resolve.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2019-5696 should prioritize immediate patch deployment from NVIDIA, as the vulnerability requires core software updates to address the buffer validation flaws. Organizations must implement comprehensive monitoring solutions to detect anomalous buffer size patterns in virtual GPU operations and establish automated alerting for suspicious memory access behaviors. Network segmentation and virtual machine isolation measures can help limit the scope of potential exploitation, while regular security assessments should verify that all virtualization components maintain proper buffer validation mechanisms. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-129, which addresses insufficient validation of length of buffers, and represents a variant of the broader class of memory safety issues that fall under ATT&CK technique T1489, specifically targeting system recovery and availability through denial of service attacks. Additionally, implementing proper input sanitization and boundary checking mechanisms within virtual GPU management systems would provide defense in depth against similar vulnerabilities in future implementations.