CVE-2025-23266: NVIDIA Container Toolkit Privilege Escalation

CVE-2025-23266 Overview

NVIDIA Container Toolkit for all platforms contains a vulnerability in some hooks used to initialize the container, where an attacker could execute arbitrary code with elevated permissions. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to escalation of privileges, data tampering, information disclosure, and denial of service.

Critical Impact

This vulnerability allows an attacker to gain elevated permissions and execute arbitrary code, leading to potential privilege escalation and other critical security compromises.

Affected Products

• NVIDIA Container Toolkit (all platforms)
• Not Available
• Not Available

Discovery Timeline

• Not Available - Vulnerability discovered by Not Available
• Not Available - Responsible disclosure to Not Available
• Not Available - CVE CVE-2025-23266 assigned
• Not Available - Not Available releases security patch
• 2025-07-17 - CVE CVE-2025-23266 published to NVD
• 2025-08-16 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-23266

Vulnerability Analysis

This code execution vulnerability arises due to improper handling of container initialization hooks within the NVIDIA Container Toolkit. Exploiting this flaw could allow attackers to bypass standard security measures, resulting in arbitrary code execution with elevated privileges.

Root Cause

The vulnerability is rooted in the way initialization hooks are processed, permitting the execution of untrusted code without adequate validation or permissions checks.

Attack Vector

This vulnerability requires an attacker to have access to an adjacent network to exploit these initialization hooks for executing arbitrary code.

# Example exploitation snippet
# This is a sanitized conceptual example
import os

os.system("docker run --rm -it vulnerable_container /bin/bash")

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-23266

Indicators of Compromise

• Unexpected container restarts
• Unauthorized code execution logs
• Elevated privileges in process activity

Detection Strategies

Utilizing SentinelOne’s behavior-based detection, unusual execution patterns and privilege escalations in Docker containers can be effectively identified. SentinelOne analyzes process behaviors in real time to pinpoint abnormal activities characteristic of this exploit.

Monitoring Recommendations

Continuous monitoring of container logs and network traffic for anomalous behavior indicative of unauthorized code execution should be implemented to preemptively identify exploitation attempts.

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-23266

Immediate Actions Required

• Update NVIDIA Container Toolkit to the latest secure version
• Apply principle of least privilege (PoLP) to all container users
• Disable unneeded container hooks and modules

Patch Information

Ensure that all systems running NVIDIA Container Toolkit are patched with the latest updates provided by NVIDIA addressing CVE-2025-23266.

Workarounds

A potential workaround includes limiting network access to container environments and employing network segmentation to reduce the attack surface.

# Configuration example for network segmentation
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport <PORT> -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -s <TRUSTED-IP> -p tcp --dport <PORT> -j ACCEPT