CVE-2026-47483: NVIDIA DCGM Exporter DoS Vulnerability

CVE-2026-47483 Overview

CVE-2026-47483 affects NVIDIA Data Center GPU Manager (DCGM) Exporter across all supported platforms. The vulnerability resides in the /debug/pprof profiling endpoints, which accept unauthenticated requests. An attacker can submit concurrent profiling requests to trigger uncontrolled resource consumption on the host. Successful exploitation can result in denial of service and limited information disclosure through profiling output. The flaw is classified under CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling.

Critical Impact
Unauthenticated remote attackers can exhaust CPU and memory resources on DCGM Exporter hosts, disrupting GPU telemetry collection and potentially exposing profiling data.

Affected Products

NVIDIA DCGM Exporter (all platforms)
Deployments exposing DCGM Exporter metrics or debug endpoints over the network
Kubernetes clusters running the DCGM Exporter DaemonSet for GPU monitoring

Discovery Timeline

2026-07-28 - CVE-2026-47483 published to NVD
2026-07-28 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2026-47483

Vulnerability Analysis

DCGM Exporter is a Go-based service that exposes NVIDIA GPU telemetry in a Prometheus-compatible format. Go binaries commonly register the net/http/pprof package, which mounts profiling handlers under /debug/pprof. In the affected DCGM Exporter builds, these endpoints are reachable without authentication and without concurrency limits.

Each pprof request triggers expensive runtime introspection. CPU profiling handlers run for the duration specified by the seconds query parameter. Heap, goroutine, and allocation profiles walk internal runtime structures and allocate buffers proportional to process state. Concurrent requests multiply this cost, saturating CPU and driving memory pressure on the host.

Because DCGM Exporter typically runs with elevated privileges to query GPU state, degradation of the exporter cascades into loss of GPU visibility for monitoring pipelines and orchestrators. Profiling responses also reveal function names, call stacks, and allocation patterns that assist attackers in reconnaissance.

Root Cause

The root cause is the exposure of Go runtime profiling endpoints on a network-accessible listener with no authentication, no rate limiting, and no cap on concurrent profiling sessions. The pprof handlers were designed for development-time inspection and do not enforce resource bounds.

Attack Vector

An unauthenticated attacker with network reachability to the DCGM Exporter listener issues repeated HTTP requests to paths such as /debug/pprof/profile, /debug/pprof/heap, and /debug/pprof/goroutine. Increasing the seconds parameter and the number of parallel connections amplifies CPU and memory consumption. Sustained request volume causes the exporter to become unresponsive, dropping metric scrapes and blocking dependent alerting.

See the NVIDIA product security advisory for vendor-supplied technical details.

Detection Methods for CVE-2026-47483

Indicators of Compromise

Repeated HTTP requests to /debug/pprof/* paths against DCGM Exporter listeners from unexpected source addresses.
Long-running requests with elevated seconds query parameter values on the profiling endpoints.
Sudden CPU saturation or memory growth on hosts running the DCGM Exporter process.
Gaps or scrape failures in Prometheus targets that collect DCGM metrics.

Detection Strategies

Inspect HTTP access logs on DCGM Exporter listeners for any traffic to /debug/pprof and treat non-loopback sources as suspicious.
Correlate exporter process CPU and RSS metrics with concurrent inbound HTTP connections to the metrics port.
Alert on Prometheus scrape failures against DCGM targets that coincide with elevated host load.

Monitoring Recommendations

Enable network flow logging for the DCGM Exporter port and baseline expected scrapers.
Track goroutine and file descriptor counts in the exporter and alert on abnormal growth.
Forward container and host telemetry to a central data lake to correlate exporter degradation with cluster-wide GPU workload impact.

How to Mitigate CVE-2026-47483

Immediate Actions Required

Upgrade DCGM Exporter to the fixed release identified in the NVIDIA product security advisory.
Restrict network access to the exporter port so only authorized Prometheus scrapers can reach it.
Remove or block /debug/pprof routes at the proxy or ingress layer until patched.
Audit Kubernetes NetworkPolicies and cloud security groups protecting GPU nodes.

Patch Information

Refer to the NVIDIA product security advisory for CVE-2026-47483 for the fixed DCGM Exporter version and upgrade instructions. Additional record details are available at the NVD entry and the CVE.org record.

Workarounds

Front the exporter with a reverse proxy that denies any path beginning with /debug/.
Bind the exporter to a loopback or private interface and expose only /metrics through a controlled proxy.
Apply Kubernetes NetworkPolicy rules limiting ingress to the DCGM Exporter pod to the monitoring namespace.
Enforce request rate limits and per-source connection caps on the ingress path to the exporter.

bash

# Example NGINX ingress snippet to block pprof endpoints
location ~ ^/debug/ {
    deny all;
    return 403;
}

location /metrics {
    proxy_pass http://dcgm-exporter:9400;
    limit_req zone=metrics burst=5 nodelay;
}