Comment 6 for bug 959842

Yes, direct rendering requires user access to the device nodes. (Indirect rendering does not.) Restricting device node write access to root would still allow X and indirect rendering to work, provided that X runs as root.

Users who wish to run CUDA/OpenCL applications would also need write access to the device nodes.

We're investigating strategies to block this exploit on the driver end. We're having another internal meeting about this tonight; I'll make it one of the agenda items to discuss other potential workarounds that don't require a driver change.

Since this is an existing vulnerability, how does it impact the release schedule for Precise, if at all, given that previous releases are equally affected? This is obviously a high priority issue for NVIDIA; for our tracking purposes, I just wanted to know how urgent this is on your end.