Nvidia Warns Windows Gamers of High-Severity Graphics Driver Flaws

silversurfer

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Nvidia, which makes gaming-friendly graphics processing units (GPUs), on Thursday fixed a slew of high-severity flaws affecting its graphics driver. The vulnerabilities allow bad actors to cripple systems with denial of service attacks, escalate privileges, tamper with data or sniff out sensitive data.

Affected is Nvidia’s graphics driver (formally known as the GPU Display Driver) for Windows. The graphics driver is used in devices targeted to enthusiast gamers; it’s the software component that enables the device’s operating system and programs to use its high-level, gaming-optimized graphics hardware.

Nvidia’s Thursday security update addresses flaws tied to 16 CVEs overall. The most severe of these (CVE‑2021‑1051) is an issue in the graphic drivers’ kernel mode layer. This flaw ranks 8.4 out of 10 on the CVSS scale, making it high severity. [...]
Various Nvidia GeForce Windows and Linux driver branches are affected; Nvidia has released a full list of affected versions and updated driver versions on its security advisory. The graphics chip manufacturer has likewise released fixes for specific versions of the vGPU software affected by these flaws on its website.
 

amirr

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Looks like my GeForce GT1030 isn't included - it's a humble card as I'm not a gamer, also shows in DUMO as none critical ?
How did you determine that? Mine is GeForce GTX 1050Ti, and I don't know if I need to update it or not. Thanks for helping me out.
 
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Cortex

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I went on the Nvidia drivers site & the G-Force driver was acually updated yesterday - I always do a clean install & only took a few minutes, I do manual search, so worth doing as Gandalf-The-Grey mentioned - Bit mad for a 650 meg download when I only install the driver which isn't very big, not a problem to me but perhaps for others on a limited connection?

G-Force Driver Download
 

amirr

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Yes, I looked and did a manual search as well; mine was published yesterday as well. I don't clean install, and I install on top of the old one.
By clean install, you mean you uninstall the old driver first?

P.S. A very knowledgeable friend told me this:
"Indeed, you can update the Nvidia drivers on top of the previous version, years ago it could cause problems, but I do it all the time now and never had a problem with it."

By the way, I always download from this link Download Drivers | NVIDIA and the one you mentioned seems a bit different, but the same!
 

plat

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Thank you for the advisory. Wiped out the prev. driver in Safe mode with DDU and installed this critical driver immediately. new driver is 461.09. No GeForce Experience or the other crap it comes bundled with.

Just idly commenting that this driver, like the prev. two, seems much better optimized: very little interference with startup, shutdown and game opening/closing. In the past, these drivers sure felt more bulky and at times, nasty. No wonder many didn't want to update, at all.
 

Freud2004

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NOT updating, the last to drivers from Nvidia have lots of problems and frame drops.

I will maintain the 460.79.

3 drivers updates in less than a month is not the way I expected for Nvidia, the last to drivers have serious bugs and frame drops of (+-10 FPS)

Release notes:


Open Issues:

  • [X4: Foundations][Vulkan]: The game may crash on GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs. [3220107]
  • [X4: Foundations][Vulkan]: HUD in the game is broken. [3169099]
  • [Batman Arkham Knight]: The game crashes when turbulence smoke is enabled. [3202250]
  • [Detroit: Become Human]: The game randomly crashes. [3203114]
  • [Steam VR game]: Stuttering and lagging occur upon launching a game. [3152190]
  • [G-SYNC][NVIDIA Ampere/Turing GPU architecture]: GPU power consumption may increase in idle mode on systems using certain higher refresh-rate G-SYNC monitors. [200667566]
  • [YouTube]: Video playback stutters while scrolling down the YouTube page. [3129705]
  • [Notebook]: Some Pascal-based notebooks w/ high refresh rate displays may randomly drop to 60Hz during gameplay. [3009452]
  • [G-Sync][Vulkan Apps]: Performance drop occurs when using G-SYNC and switching from full-screen mode to windowed mode using the in-game settings. [200681477] To workaround, either launch the game in windowed mode directly or disable G-SYNC.
  • [GeForce RTX 3070][Clone Mode]: When the resolution is set to 2560x1440 @ 144Hz, the performance state is stuck at maximum performance. [200678414]
  • [NVIDIA Turing or laterWindows Movies and TV Player]: When playing a 4k video in fullscreen mode on a 2560x1440 HDR monitor, the video extends beyond the edge of the screen. [3186830]
  • Webcam video image on Microsoft Teams appears in black and white with red splotches [3205912 ]
  • [Resident Evil 2 Remake/Devil May Cry V] Games which used the RE2 engine may crash in DirectX 11 mode [200686418]


P.S. - For the ones who update the drivers, fast startup off, or you will have problems with the changes made in the system.
 

Venustus

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you have a option to do clean install,
I always use this:
 

amirr

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During the install after downloading the driver, if you do custom install you have a option to do clean install, I choose this - As I'm not a gamer this if fine for me but it may change setting you have saved, I have to say I don't know about that.
Again thanks for your input. My gamer friend told me this:
"You can do the clean install, yes; if you had specific settings you set manually, it would erase them. For instance, I have manually set 3D parameters for some games and applications, and I’m too lazy to redo them each time, so I don’t do a clean install myself, but if that’s not your case, you can enable it."
 
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