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ZDNET's key takeaways
With one compromised account, Dirty Frag can expose your system.
No patch can protect you from all possible attacks yet.
To stay safe, you'll need to block several services, including VPNs.
Linux has been having a rough few weeks. First, the Copy Fail security hole was uncovered by AI researchers. In that case, the patches were quickly made and distributed. We weren't so lucky with the newly disclosed Linux kernel flaw, dubbed Dirty Frag, which was also, it seems, discovered with AI's help, but patches are still in the works.
Also: Linux is getting a security wake-up call - why it was inevitable and I'm not worried
Security researcher Hyunwoo Kim, who disclosed the issue on May 7, describes Dirty Frag as an extension of the same bug class as previous high-profile Linux kernel flaws, 2022's Dirty Pipe and Copy Fail. Like those flaws, Dirty Frag exploits kernel code paths that write to memory pages accessible to unprivileged user space, but it targets a different structure: the fragment field of sk_buff networking buffers.
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