Description

NVIDIA Infrastructure Controller for Linux contains a vulnerability where an attacker could cause improper certificate validation. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to information disclosure, data tampering, and denial of service.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "6.7",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-22T15:17:13.307Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-22T15:17:13.307Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A critical vulnerability has been identified within the NVIDIA Infrastructure Controller for Linux, specifically involving improper certificate validation during secure communications.\nThe vulnerability allows an unauthenticated or authenticated attacker to bypass standard identity verification protocols, effectively undermining the trust chain of the infrastructure.\nImpacts include unauthorized information disclosure, the capability to perform data tampering via man-in-the-middle (MitM) positioning, and potential service disruption leading to denial of service.\nThis flaw resides in the handling of cryptographic verification logic, where the controller fails to properly validate the authenticity or chain-of-trust of certificates presented by remote peers.\nThe risk implication is significant for environments relying on the NVIDIA Infrastructure Controller for sensitive management tasks, as it permits attackers to masquerade as trusted entities.\nExploitation requires the attacker to position themselves within the network path or compromise a component that interacts with the controller's secure communication interfaces.\nDefensive measures must focus on enforcing strict certificate path validation and ensuring that all peer communications are subjected to rigorous identity verification processes.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability originates from a failure in the NVIDIA Infrastructure Controller's implementation of TLS/SSL handshake validation. Specifically, the component fails to properly verify the subject alternative name (SAN), expiration status, or the hierarchical certificate authority (CA) signature of provided certificates.\nWhen a remote endpoint initiates a connection, the Infrastructure Controller incorrectly validates the cryptographic material. Because the controller does not properly verify the legitimacy of the certificate chain, it accepts forged or malicious certificates as trusted.\nThe attack flow proceeds as follows: First, the attacker establishes a network position (e.g., via ARP spoofing or routing manipulation) between the controller and the legitimate peer. Second, the attacker initiates a communication request to the controller. Third, when the controller requests a certificate for mutual TLS or identification purposes, the attacker presents a self-signed or otherwise invalid certificate.\nDue to the flawed validation logic, the controller does not reject the connection but instead proceeds to establish a secure session with the attacker's endpoint. This allows the attacker to conduct an intercept-and-proxy attack.\nPost-exploitation, the attacker can leverage this position to inject unauthorized commands, manipulate telemetry data sent by the controller (data tampering), or exfiltrate sensitive configuration files and operational data (information disclosure).\nFurthermore, by providing malformed or resource-intensive packets after establishing a 'trusted' session, an attacker can trigger exceptions within the controller's processing threads, leading to a state of denial of service that prevents the infrastructure from managing underlying hardware properly.\nThe root cause is likely an improperly configured or missing callback function in the transport layer security implementation, which permits the continuation of the handshake despite validation errors in the X.509 certificate parsing phase.\nThis vulnerability is applicable to deployments where the NVIDIA Infrastructure Controller is exposed to untrusted network segments, emphasizing the need for network segmentation as a compensating control until the logic is corrected."
}