PSA - Upgrade Your Nvidia Graphics Drivers To Avoid a "High-Severity" Vulnerability

Nvidia has released one of its rare security bulletins over the last 24 hours, disclosing 15 security vulnerabilities that affect its Windows and Linux graphics drivers. Nine are marked as "high-severity", as they could allow attackers to bork* your PC, gain administrative access, exfiltrate personal data and/or execute arbitrary code. All the bad stuff, basically.

For GeForce graphics card owners, it's therefore recommended to update your drivers to the latest available version, with all versions prior to 596.36 (for modern GeForce GPUs) or 482.53 (for GTX 10-series and earlier GPUs) vulnerable to some or all of these exploits.

If you have the Nvidia app installed on Windows and update your drivers when prompted, it's likely that you're already on the latest 596.49 update released a week ago, but do check to make sure.

For Linux users, your target version is 590.48.01 and you can use the console command nvidia-smi (or the GUI alternative nvidia-settings) to check your current installed driver version. Using your OS package manager to install the latest available updates is normally the best way to proceed on most distributions.

The Nvidia disclosure page includes all of the grisly technical details if you'd like to learn more, including information of interest to owners of non-gaming GPUs like Quadro, NVS and Tesla.

*This is a technical term.