Researcher Asim Manizada published working exploit code on September 18 for four Linux kernel local privilege escalation flaws, each letting a local user gain root. The bugs are DirtyAH6 in IPsec AH6, TUNderflow in TUN/TAP, PPPoEject in PPPoE, and DiagSpill in SCTP diagnostics. Kernel maintainers fixed all four in recent weeks after a coordinated hold with distributions, and no in-the-wild abuse has been reported. Three require unprivileged user namespaces, which many distributions enable by default, while DiagSpill needs only an available SCTP module. The exploits are tuned to specific builds and can crash machines, but public code raises risk on shared multi-user systems.
Researchers at Nebula Security disclosed GhostLock, a Linux kernel flaw that lets any logged-in user gain full root on an unpatched machine, and it also escapes containers. Tracked as CVE-2026-43499, the bug has shipped by default in essentially every mainstream distribution since 2011 and needs no special permissions or network access; ordinary threading calls from any local program are enough. Nebula built a working exploit it says is 97 percent reliable and published the code, though no in-the-wild use is known yet. There is no full workaround, patch availability is uneven across distributions, and one earlier fix introduced a separate crash bug, so confirm the fixed package version.
Researchers disclosed closely related Linux kernel flaws in the traffic-control subsystem that let an unprivileged local user gain root, and working exploits appeared within a day of disclosure. The main bug, nicknamed pedit COW (CVE-2026-46331), is an out-of-bounds write in the packet-editing action that corrupts shared page-cache memory; a related variant tracked as DirtyClone (CVE-2026-43503) was demonstrated by JFrog. Rather than touching files on disk, the exploit poisons the cached copy of a setuid root program like /bin/su in memory and runs the altered version as root, so file-integrity checks still pass. Exploitation needs the act_pedit module loadable and unprivileged user namespaces enabled, both common defaults on RHEL and Debian.
TrustStrike Labs