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PC Gamer
PC Gamer
Jess Kinghorn

'A single 732-byte Python script can be used to obtain root on essentially all Linux distributions shipped since 2017': Time to update your kernel

A view of a gentoo (Pygoscelis papua) penguin at the Paradise Bay in the Gerlache Strait -which separates the Palmer Archipelago from the Antarctic Peninsula, on January 20, 2024. Scientists and researchers from various countries are collaborating on projects during the X Antarctic Expedition aboard the Colombian research vessel 'ARC Simon Bolivar,' designed exclusively to develop scientific projects. These initiatives involve analyzing the current condition of the Antarctic sea, studying atmospheric pressure, and monitoring the species inhabiting this region of the planet. .

Gaming on Linux has never been better—but that doesn't mean your distros are free from security threats. Case in point is a severe vulnerability nicknamed 'Copy Fail,' which allows a local user to dig into the guts of the OS and give themselves root privileges merely by writing four bytes of controlled data into the page cache of any readable file.

The security research team at Theori disclosed the vulnerability last Wednesday, though CISA reports that threat actors have since been observed using the exploit in the wild. The security flaw has been given the designation CVE-2026-31431 and marked with a high severity score of 7.8 (via Bleeping Computer).

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