Geoff writes in this morning asking for more eploration around the Nvidia vulnerability patch that was released yesterday. (http://www.securityweek.com/nvidia-releases-fix-dangerous-display-driver-exploit)

He writes: "Its really quiet if it is truly a vulnerability patch.  I don't see any reference to an exploit fix.  Maybe you can dig deeper and confirm?"

On December 25th, 2012, a security research released exploit code that leverages a buffer overflow vulnerability in versions prior to 310.90 of the GeForce Driver for a popular line of NVIDIA video cards.  This is a privilege escalation exploit that allows someone with low-level access to gain administrative-privileges on that system.

Since it requires access to the target system before it is effective, there isn't as much press about it as you might expect.  However, in our current world where uses can be expected to click on just about anything, gaining that access isn't as hard as some might expect or want.

It's been less than two weeks between the public release of the code and a patch, and there were a couple of holidays within those two weeks, so I'd give NVIDA points for their response time.  As for how serious I think it is?  I'm downloading the patch as I write this up.

-KL