Executive brief
A race condition in the Linux kernel's mm/gup.c, known as 'Dirty COW', allows local users to gain privileges by leveraging incorrect handling of the copy-on-write (COW) feature. An attacker can exploit this to write to read-only memory mappings.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 2.x through 4.x before 4.8.3
Timeline
- 2016-10: exploited: Exploited in the wild in October 2016.
- 2022-03-03: disclosed