CVE-2024-0085: Medium NVIDIA vGPU Host Privilege Flaw

CVE-2024-0085 is a Medium severity (CVSS 6.3) flaw in NVIDIA vGPU software for Windows and Linux, where unprivileged users could execute privileged operations on the host. NVIDIA fixed it in vGPU 17.2, 16.6 and 13.11. Update the Virtual GPU Manager to the fixed release for your branch.

What's affected

• Product: NVIDIA vGPU software, Virtual GPU Manager, on Windows and Linux per the record and the bulletin.
• Fixed Virtual GPU Manager releases for Citrix Hypervisor, VMware vSphere, Red Hat Enterprise Linux KVM and Ubuntu: 17.2 (550.90.05), 16.6 (535.183.04) and 13.11 (470.256.02).
• Azure Stack HCI: 17.2 (552.55) is the fixed release listed for this CVE only. Cloud Gaming: May 2024 release, 555.52.04 for the manager and 555.99 for the Windows guest driver.
• Severity: Medium, CVSS 6.3, local vector, high attack complexity, low privileges. Impacts per NVIDIA are data tampering, privilege escalation and denial of service. Record and bulletin agree.
• NVIDIA says the tables may not be exhaustive and risk scores are averages, so judge it against your own environment.
• Exploitation: the record's KEV flag is false, and the bulletin does not report exploitation.

How to check if you're exposed

Run nvidia-smi on each vGPU host and read the driver version. Compare it with the fixed versions above for your hypervisor and release branch.

On Azure Stack HCI, check the vGPU release that your deployment uses, since it has its own fixed build. List every host in the cluster, because a cluster is only as patched as its oldest node.

What to do now

1. Inventory vGPU hosts, hypervisors and release branches.
2. Pick the fixed release that matches each branch from the bulletin.
3. Schedule host maintenance and update the Virtual GPU Manager.
4. Re-run nvidia-smi after the update and record the new versions.
5. Review who can launch guests with vGPU profiles.

Why it matters

The record maps this to CWE-266 (CWE-266), incorrect privilege assignment. Code that serves virtual machines should hand out only the rights each guest needs. When an unprivileged user can reach privileged operations on the host, the isolation that virtualization promises is thinner than expected.

The high attack complexity keeps the score at Medium. It is still the same family as CVE-2024-0084 from the same bulletin, so most teams will patch both in one maintenance window. Treating them together saves a second round of downtime.

It helps to read this bulletin as a set. NVIDIA fixed CVE-2024-0084, CVE-2024-0085, CVE-2024-0089 and CVE-2024-0090 in the same releases, and the fixed builds overlap. Build one table of hosts, guests and drivers, mark each against the fixed numbers, and work through it once. That is faster than treating each CVE as its own ticket, and it avoids leaving a guest driver behind after the host is done.

Quick check

Sources

• NVIDIA security bulletin 5551 (vGPU and GPU display driver, June 2024)
• Safeguard Gold entry for CVE-2024-0085

Last reviewed: 19 October 2026.