Google, Xiaomi, and Huawei affected by zero-day flaw that unlocks root access
To me, the biggest part of this story is:<p>1. Over two years ago, this was apparently detected automatically by the syzkaller kernel fuzzer, and automatically reported on its public mailing list. [1]<p>2. Over a year and a half ago, it was apparently fixed in the upstream kernel. [2]<p>3. It was apparently never merged back to various &quot;stable&quot; kernels, leading to the recent CVE. [3]<p>So you might read that and think &quot;Ok, probably a rare mistake&quot;...<p>...but instead:<p>4. This is apparently a _super_ common sequence of events, with kernel vulnerabilities getting lost in the shuffle, or otherwise not backported to &quot;stable&quot; kernels for a variety of reasons like the patch no cleanly longer applies.<p>Dmitry Vyukov (original author of syzkaller fuzzer that found this 2 years ago) gave a very interesting talk on how frequently  this happens a couple weeks ago at the Linux Maintainer&#x27;s Summit, along with some discussion of how to change kernel dev processes to try to dramatically improve things:<p>slides: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;linuxplumbersconf.org&#x2F;event&#x2F;4&#x2F;contributions&#x2F;554&#x2F;attachments&#x2F;353&#x2F;584&#x2F;Reflections__Kernel_Summit_2019.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;linuxplumbersconf.org&#x2F;event&#x2F;4&#x2F;contributions&#x2F;554&#x2F;atta...</a><p>video: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;a2Nv-KJyqPk?t=5239" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;a2Nv-KJyqPk?t=5239</a><p>---<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;dvyukov&#x2F;status&#x2F;1180195777680986113" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;dvyukov&#x2F;status&#x2F;1180195777680986113</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;git.kernel.org&#x2F;pub&#x2F;scm&#x2F;linux&#x2F;kernel&#x2F;git&#x2F;stable&#x2F;linux.git&#x2F;commit&#x2F;drivers&#x2F;android&#x2F;binder.c?h=linux-4.14.y&amp;id=7a3cee43e935b9d526ad07f20bf005ba7e74d05b" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;git.kernel.org&#x2F;pub&#x2F;scm&#x2F;linux&#x2F;kernel&#x2F;git&#x2F;stable&#x2F;linux...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;grsecurity&#x2F;status&#x2F;1180059539233804288" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;grsecurity&#x2F;status&#x2F;118005953923380...</a>