New ‘Dirty Frag’ exploit targets Linux kernel for root access

A newly disclosed Linux privilege escalation issue dubbed “Dirty Frag” is giving attackers a cleaner path to post-compromise escalation to root privileges. According to Microsoft, a couple of vulnerabilities constituting the issue, affecting Linux kernel networking and memory-fragment handling components, are already seeing active exploitation in the wild. The exploitation attempts look indistinguishable from the recently disclosed Copy Fail campaigns.