Dirty COW

For the television show, see Dirty Cows.
Logo for Dirty COW

Dirty COW (Dirty copy-on-write) is a computer security vulnerability for the Linux kernel that affects all Linux-based operating systems including Android. It is a local privilege escalation bug that exploits a race condition in the implementation of the copy-on-write mechanism.[1][2] The bug has been lurking in the Linux kernel since version 2.6.22 (released in September 2007), and has been actively exploited at least since October 2016.[2] The bug has been patched in Linux kernel versions 4.8.3, 4.7.9, 4.4.26 and newer.

Although it is a local privilege escalation bug, remote attackers can use it in conjunction with other exploits that allow remote execution of non-privileged code to achieve remote root access on a computer.[1] The attack itself does not leave traces in the system log.[2]

It has the CVE designation CVE-2016-5195.[3] The Debian operating system distribution has announced that it has released a patch for the vulnerability.[4] Dirty Cow was one of the first security issues transparently fixed in Ubuntu by the Canonical Live Patch service.[5]

It has been demonstrated that the bug can be utilized to root any Android device up to Android version 7.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 Goodin, Dan (2016-10-20). ""Most serious" Linux privilege-escalation bug ever is under active exploit (updated)". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2016-10-21.
  2. 1 2 3 Vaughan-Nichols, Steven J. "The Dirty Cow Linux bug: A silly name for a serious problem". ZDNet. Retrieved 2016-10-21.
  3. "Kernel Local Privilege Escalation - CVE-2016-5195 - Red Hat Customer Portal". access.redhat.com. Retrieved 2016-10-21.
  4. "CVE-2016-5195". security-tracker.debian.org. Retrieved 2016-10-21.
  5. "LSN-0012-1 Linux kernel vulnerability". Ubuntu Security mailing list. October 20, 2016.
  6. "Android phones rooted by "most serious" Linux escalation bug ever". Ars Technica. October 24, 2016.


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/8/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.