Summary
NVIDIA Infrastructure Controller for Linux contains hard-coded credentials that may be usable by an attacker under applicable deployment conditions. Successful exploitation could enable privilege escalation, data tampering, denial of service, or disclosure of protected information.
Affected context
The vulnerability occurs in deployments using NVIDIA Infrastructure Controller for Linux where credential material is embedded in the software or otherwise made available through a fixed, shared authentication mechanism. Risk depends on whether an attacker can reach the affected component, obtain or invoke the credentials, and access resources protected by them.
Exploit preconditions
- Attack surface: The NVIDIA Infrastructure Controller for Linux and services or interfaces protected by its embedded credentials
- Required access: Sufficient access to interact with the controller, its authentication flow, or resources reachable using the credentials
- Trigger point: Use or discovery of the hard-coded credentials during authentication or authorization
- Why exploitation is possible: Fixed credentials may be recoverable, reusable, or shared across installations, allowing access controls to be bypassed when the associated account or service has elevated privileges
Why this happens
The underlying weakness is the inclusion of authentication secrets directly in software or a fixed distribution artifact rather than obtaining them from a protected, deployment-specific secret store.
This maps to CWE-798: Use of Hard-coded Credentials. Hard-coded credentials reduce the ability to rotate or revoke access independently for each installation and may give attackers a predictable path to privileged functionality.
Potential impact
- An attacker may escalate privileges within the controller or its host environment.
- An attacker could modify infrastructure or application data.
- A compromised account or service could cause denial of service.
- Protected information may be disclosed.
- Shared credentials could enable broader compromise across multiple deployments.
General mitigation guidance
Mitigation generally focuses on removing embedded secrets and reducing the privileges associated with service identities.
Common defensive patterns include:
- Retrieving credentials from a protected, deployment-specific secret manager.
- Supporting secure credential rotation and revocation without replacing application binaries.
- Assigning service accounts only the permissions required for their functions.
- Restricting administrative interfaces and authentication endpoints by network policy.
- Separating credentials and identities between environments and installations.
- Rotating any credentials that may have been exposed and reviewing dependent access grants.
How teams detect issues like this
Organizations can assess this weakness through:
- Static analysis and secret-scanning rules for embedded passwords, tokens, keys, and fixed authentication strings.
- Code review checks for default credentials, fallback secrets, and credential constants.
- Binary and package inspection for recoverable authentication material.
- Runtime monitoring for unexpected use of privileged service identities.
- Policy enforcement requiring external secret management and credential rotation.
Automated security review tools may help identify candidate secrets, but findings should be validated against the deployment's authentication design.
