Linux kernel OS local root exploit
A. P. Saleel, Mohamed Nazeer, Babak D. Beheshti · 2017
Dirty Copy on Write (COW) vulnerability, discovered by Phil Oester on October 2016, it is a serious vulnerability which could escalate unprivileged user to gain full control on devices (Computers, Mobile Smart Phones, Gaming devices that run Linux based operating systems). This means that any user who exploits this bug, would escalate his/her privileges; and can do anything either locally or remotely (with some modifications) to hijack the device, destroy data, create a backdoor, or to record all key strokes, use computer as an attack (object) to attack other computer in the internet (in the wild), etc., COW is a local root exploit in Linux causing vulnerability issues. This paper will discuss the copy on write issue in Linux, it will also explain the nature of the problem and how it is caused, and the different mechanism to mitigate it.