Category Linux

How to Fix CVE-2026-31431 (“Copy Fail”)

Overview CVE-2026-31431, nicknamed Copy Fail, is a local privilege escalation vulnerability in the Linux kernel, published on 29 April 2026 alongside a public proof-of-concept exploit. It allows an unprivileged local user to escalate to root. The flaw lives in the…

ICMP Type 13 and Type 14 — Timestamp Request / Reply

These are two of the original ICMP message types defined in RFC 792 (1981), alongside echo (ping) and destination-unreachable. They were designed for clock synchronization across a network, back before NTP existed. What they do The reply carries three 32-bit…

Fixing CVE-1999-0524 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

CVE-1999-0524 is an information-disclosure finding: the host responds to ICMP timestamp requests (type 13) with timestamp replies (type 14), which can leak the system clock and (historically) help an attacker with time-based attacks. The fix is simply to drop both…