Executive brief
A security flaw in AMD GPU hardware isolation could allow a user with administrative privileges inside a virtual machine to interfere with the physical host computer. By accessing restricted memory areas of the graphics processor, an attacker can force the entire host system to reboot. This results in a denial-of-service condition, potentially disrupting all other virtual machines and services running on that physical server.
Technical details
The vulnerability is classified as CWE-1189 (Improper Isolation of Shared Resources on System-on-a-Chip). It stems from insufficient hardware-level isolation of the GPU's Memory-Mapped I/O (MMIO) register space. A privileged attacker operating within a guest Virtual Machine (VM) can bypass intended boundaries to access specific victim ranges of the GPU register space. This unauthorized access can trigger a fatal error or instability in the host operating system, resulting in a system reboot. The attack requires local access with low privileges (PR:L) to the guest environment but impacts the availability of the host system.
Affected products
- AMD GPU Hardware
Timeline
- 2026-05-15: disclosed: Initial NVD publication date