AI Infrastructure at Risk: NVIDIA Fixes Critical 9.0 RCE Flaw in Apex Library (CVE-2025-33244)

NVIDIA has issued an urgent security update for its Apex library to remediate a critical vulnerability that could allow attackers to execute malicious code on Linux-based systems. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-33244, carries a high CVSS base score of 9.0, signaling a significant risk to data centers and AI development environments.

Apex is a popular tool used by developers to streamline mixed-precision and distributed training in PyTorch. However, this newly uncovered hole turns that efficiency into a potential entry point for hackers.

The core of the issue involves how the software handles incoming information. According to the security bulletin: “NVIDIA APEX for Linux contains a vulnerability where an unauthorized attacker could cause a deserialization of untrusted data”.

This type of vulnerability occurs when a program processes malformed data without proper validation, effectively allowing an attacker to “trick” the system into running unauthorized commands. The risk is particularly high for environments using older versions of the PyTorch framework.

A successful exploit doesn’t just crash a program; it gives an attacker a foothold in the system. NVIDIA warns that the impact of this vulnerability is wide-ranging, potentially leading to:

• Code Execution: The ability for an attacker to run their own software on the victim’s server.
• Escalation of Privileges: Hackers could gain administrative control over the entire environment.
• Data Tampering & Theft: The vulnerability may lead to “data tampering, and information disclosure,” putting sensitive AI models and proprietary data at risk.
• Denial of Service: Attackers could effectively shut down critical computing resources.

To secure your environment, the company advises: “To protect your system, clone or update NVIDIA Apex to include commit db8e053 or later”.

Furthermore, users must ensure their underlying software stack is up to date. The vulnerability specifically “affects environments that use PyTorch versions earlier than 2.6”. Therefore, NVIDIA recommends that organizations “ensure that your environment uses PyTorch 2.6 or later”.

All versions of Apex on Linux that do not include the specific db8e053 commit are currently considered vulnerable.