Kind of worried to be honest, two in like a week? Pretty scary.
I’m very dumb about Linux technical stuff but I feel like root access is way too easy to be accessed.
Is there any way to make it harder? I mean let’s say similar to Android, you need to unlock the boot loader first, flash a recovery and flash Magisk or something, that’s a good layer before root access.
At least for Linux Desktop, maybe make it so we can get root access only via a bootable USB with a correct password? Just for sporadic system changes.
With AI enabled bug hunting, you’re likely to see a blitz of vulnerabilities, followed by a significant reduction in vulnerabilities.
Yes, malicious folks are usin em – heck, Kali’s had AI integrations for a while on a bunch of its tools even, for pen testing. But devs writing code get em too, and those are the people we need to see using these sorts of workflows as it lets them clip a bunch of zero days.
I think Mozilla, as an example, had a recent patch that cleaned up something like 271 zero days? Anthropic taking their Mythos stuff to banks/govt was largely just a publicity thing to try and shut people up who were mocking claudes code, but also potentially because it’d found govt-placed backdoors that they wanted the gov to know were about to be exposed / patched. The USA’s alleged ability to “shut off” tech assets during raids in Venezuela and Iran, gets trickier if AI is exposing their back doors. Likely also why the US Administration is now saying they want to review AIs before they get released. Mythos definitely isn’t the only game in town for this sort of stuff – but the general idea that the dev teams will be shifting to using these tools for QA / writing more secure apps in the near future, is fairly valid. So I wouldn’t go too tinfoil hat-y on that front… though it is a period where we’ll see a need to patch aggressively, and to double check security configs etc.
This exploit appears to be inspired by the copy fail.
Should you be worried? Nah, You should not be installing untrusted software on your device. This isnt even the type of exploit that scares me. Your device gas to already be compromised for this exploit to succeed.
As a former OS security pro, this is the right answer. Not because of the exploit itself, but because young (unmentored) coders readily trust some really bad patterns of pulling in random junk from the web and running it. THIS is how the LPE becomes essentially an RCE-level problem.
If you refer to physical access I wouldn’t say that, I’ve encrypted partition.
But if you’re saying just access to my main user inside the OS, then I’d really like if you could elaborate with real examples how can user access do any harm to my system without root access. Real examples please not speculation or theory.
Your user account can run applications and read and write to a lot of locations on the disk.
So it can be used to run malware (cryptominers, ransomware, RATs etc.) Exfiltrate the data your account has access to, download or plant malicious or illegal data, use your internet connection to attack other systems with DOS or similar, use any logged in social media accounts to attack or spam your contacts, steal saved passwords and credentials from your web browsers, use your peripherals or connected devices (printers cameras microphone speakers), pivot to access other services on your local network (smart devices, IoT, TVs, home lab) etc.
There are comparatively few things an attacker wants on a desktop that actually require root access. It’s mostly just system files, package management and settings changes that require root to mess with. Eg. You would need root to dump a shadow file or stuff like luks encryption keys from kernel memory, but if an attacker has your logged in user account, the disk is already decrypted and account is already logged in.
Most systems also use single user, you normally give yourself docker group access (I use docker for work) and that alone is equivalent to root access. It’s not the 90s anymore where universities gave user access to all students, priv escalation was a big security threat, now it almost doesn’t mean anything, nobody shares the same machine anymore the way they used to do.
What’s up with all these vulnerabilities?
Kind of worried to be honest, two in like a week? Pretty scary.
I’m very dumb about Linux technical stuff but I feel like root access is way too easy to be accessed.
Is there any way to make it harder? I mean let’s say similar to Android, you need to unlock the boot loader first, flash a recovery and flash Magisk or something, that’s a good layer before root access.
At least for Linux Desktop, maybe make it so we can get root access only via a bootable USB with a correct password? Just for sporadic system changes.
Is there anything like that?
It’s a positive thing, don’t be worried.
These vulns already existed. It’s possible the bad guys were already using them. This gets them out in the open and on their way to being resolved.
Just keep patches up to date with any modern and maintained distro and you’ll be grand.
With AI enabled bug hunting, you’re likely to see a blitz of vulnerabilities, followed by a significant reduction in vulnerabilities.
Yes, malicious folks are usin em – heck, Kali’s had AI integrations for a while on a bunch of its tools even, for pen testing. But devs writing code get em too, and those are the people we need to see using these sorts of workflows as it lets them clip a bunch of zero days.
I think Mozilla, as an example, had a recent patch that cleaned up something like 271 zero days? Anthropic taking their Mythos stuff to banks/govt was largely just a publicity thing to try and shut people up who were mocking claudes code, but also potentially because it’d found govt-placed backdoors that they wanted the gov to know were about to be exposed / patched. The USA’s alleged ability to “shut off” tech assets during raids in Venezuela and Iran, gets trickier if AI is exposing their back doors. Likely also why the US Administration is now saying they want to review AIs before they get released. Mythos definitely isn’t the only game in town for this sort of stuff – but the general idea that the dev teams will be shifting to using these tools for QA / writing more secure apps in the near future, is fairly valid. So I wouldn’t go too tinfoil hat-y on that front… though it is a period where we’ll see a need to patch aggressively, and to double check security configs etc.
This exploit appears to be inspired by the copy fail.
Should you be worried? Nah, You should not be installing untrusted software on your device. This isnt even the type of exploit that scares me. Your device gas to already be compromised for this exploit to succeed.
Supply chain attacks are what scare me.
As a former OS security pro, this is the right answer. Not because of the exploit itself, but because young (unmentored) coders readily trust some really bad patterns of pulling in random junk from the web and running it. THIS is how the LPE becomes essentially an RCE-level problem.
There are two types of users: those who run untrusted software, and those who are way too trusting.
if somebody has user access to your computer, they are already 95% there, so I am not worried about these priv escalation part of the last 5%
If you refer to physical access I wouldn’t say that, I’ve encrypted partition.
But if you’re saying just access to my main user inside the OS, then I’d really like if you could elaborate with real examples how can user access do any harm to my system without root access. Real examples please not speculation or theory.
Your user account can run applications and read and write to a lot of locations on the disk.
So it can be used to run malware (cryptominers, ransomware, RATs etc.) Exfiltrate the data your account has access to, download or plant malicious or illegal data, use your internet connection to attack other systems with DOS or similar, use any logged in social media accounts to attack or spam your contacts, steal saved passwords and credentials from your web browsers, use your peripherals or connected devices (printers cameras microphone speakers), pivot to access other services on your local network (smart devices, IoT, TVs, home lab) etc.
There are comparatively few things an attacker wants on a desktop that actually require root access. It’s mostly just system files, package management and settings changes that require root to mess with. Eg. You would need root to dump a shadow file or stuff like luks encryption keys from kernel memory, but if an attacker has your logged in user account, the disk is already decrypted and account is already logged in.
Most systems also use single user, you normally give yourself docker group access (I use docker for work) and that alone is equivalent to root access. It’s not the 90s anymore where universities gave user access to all students, priv escalation was a big security threat, now it almost doesn’t mean anything, nobody shares the same machine anymore the way they used to do.
For me the scariest thing someone could do on my pc is exfiltrate all the data from my home directory which is readable by my user account.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but that’s harm to me without root access.
There is an LLM called mythos from Anthropic that is very good at finding vulnerabilities.
Drinking the kool-aid, are we?