nasty nVidia Vulnerability

Discussion in 'Linux, BSD and Other OS's' started by Anti-Trend, Oct 17, 2006.

  1. Anti-Trend

    Anti-Trend Nonconformist Geek

    Likes Received:
    118
    Trophy Points:
    63
    NVidia's closed-source UNIX binary drivers are vulnerable to a particularly nasty exploit. There's no fix in the stable driver release tree yet, but the current 9xxx beta version is not vulnerable. You should get the latest beta here: BETA Drivers


    Note1: If you click on the proof-of-concept link in that nvnews forum link while running Firefox, I hope you've saved any open documents.

    Note2: The latest Beta drivers are rock-solid for me, and seem to perform better in Doom3 than the mainstream drivers. So far, so good.
     
    Anti-Trend, Oct 17, 2006
    #1
  2. megamaced

    megamaced Geek Geek Geek!

    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    36
    Certainly raises the argument for using the open source 'nv' driver. Shame that it has no 3D capabilities whatsoever though.

    I assume that this proof of concept vunerability effects the nVidia legacy driver as well? If so, I wonder if it will be updated also?
     
    megamaced, Oct 17, 2006
    #2
  3. Anti-Trend

    Anti-Trend Nonconformist Geek

    Likes Received:
    118
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Good question. Actually, my wife is running a legacy version of the driver, and I was unable to reproduce it on her machine. It seems to affect only the later builds of the driver. But for the rest of us, if you want fast 3D for NVidia, right now the beta drivers are the only reasonable option.
     
    Anti-Trend, Oct 17, 2006
    #3
  4. kenji san

    kenji san Geek Trainee

    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Damn nVidia :doh:

    I have been running the nv driver for a few months now due to laziness and I may now never install the proprientary 3d driver. I've been fine without it so far. I try really hard to like nVidia but this is crappy.
     
    kenji san, Oct 17, 2006
    #4
  5. Anti-Trend

    Anti-Trend Nonconformist Geek

    Likes Received:
    118
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Agreed. That said, the beta driver seems quite solid so far, and is not vulnerable to this exploit. So if you want good 3D accelleration with NVidia in UNIX, you should get the latest build of the beta drivers.
     
    Anti-Trend, Oct 18, 2006
    #5
  6. Addis

    Addis The King

    Likes Received:
    91
    Trophy Points:
    48
    Overall the nVidia stable drivers have worked fine for me so far. I'll upgrade to the beta when I get home. Question though, how would I actually do it through the Debian way?
     
    Addis, Oct 19, 2006
    #6
  7. Anti-Trend

    Anti-Trend Nonconformist Geek

    Likes Received:
    118
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Make sure your kernel headers match the installed kernel, download the drivers from Nvidia, and run something like the following:

    Code:
    sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9625-pkg1.run --x-module-path=/usr/lib/xorg/modules/ -aqNX --no-runlevel-check
     
    Anti-Trend, Oct 19, 2006
    #7
  8. Anti-Trend

    Anti-Trend Nonconformist Geek

    Likes Received:
    118
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Update: NVidia has released a non-beta version of the 8xxx series driver which contains the fix. Get it here:

    Unix Drivers Portal Page
     
    Anti-Trend, Oct 20, 2006
    #8
  9. kenji san

    kenji san Geek Trainee

    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    NVidia didn't forget freeBSD. This is good news. If only other commercial vendors were this fast in patching the holes. :D
     
    kenji san, Oct 20, 2006
    #9
  10. Milanche

    Milanche Geek

    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    6
    Yeah... I think nvidia is better than ATi because of drivers. At al other things they're the same...
     
    Milanche, Oct 20, 2006
    #10

Share This Page