NVIDIA Jetson Linux / IGX OS (NvMap): NvMap does not track memory allocations correctly, so one unprivileged process

Impact

NvMap does not track memory allocations correctly, so one unprivileged process can drive the allocator into overallocation and starve everything else sharing the integrated GPU. On an IGX or Jetson node running several containerized workloads against one GPU, any single container can take GPU memory away from all its neighbours and hold the node down. The break is availability only - no data crosses the boundary - but it is a genuine noisy-neighbour escape hatch on a device class that is increasingly used to run more than one workload.

Who can reach it

A local, unprivileged process on the device - which in practice means any container or workload you scheduled onto the node. No privilege escalation and no user interaction needed first; the allocator path is reachable from ordinary GPU API use.

What to do

Move Jetson Linux to 35.6.3 or later on the L4T 35 branch, 36.4.6 or later on L4T 36, or 38.2.2 or later on L4T 38; on IGX OS take Kernel SRU 1035 or newer. The fix is in the kernel-side allocator, so the update does not take effect until the device reboots. Until then, the only real mitigation is capping GPU memory per workload if your runtime supports it.

References