Dirty COW (CVE-2016-5195) is a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Linux Kernel.
A race condition was found in the way the Linux kernel’s memory subsystem handled the copy-on-write (COW) breakage of private read-only memory mappings.
Impact
- An unprivileged local user could use this flaw to gain write access to otherwise read-only memory mappings and thus increase their privileges on the system and gain root access instantly.
- This flaw allows an attacker with a local system account to modify on-disk binaries, bypassing the standard permission mechanisms that would prevent modification without an appropriate permission set.
It’s highly recommended to patch the system kernel in all Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS and RHEL distros to prevent system breakage.
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