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Copy Fail: What You Need to Know About the Most Severe Linux Threat in Years

Palo Alto Unit 42By Justin Moore9 min read

PoC publicLinux kernel (AF_ALG/algif_aead)
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Executive Summary

On April 29, 2026, researchers publicly disclosed a highly reliable local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-31431">CVE-2026-31431. This vulnerability is commonly referred to as Copy Fail. Discovered in about an hour through an AI-assisted process, this logic flaw allows an unprivileged local attacker to consistently escalate their access to root across virtually all major Linux distributions released since 2017.…

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