A new Linux exploit is affecting some Android 12 devices including the Google Pixel 6 and Samsung Galaxy S22 series smartphones. This new Linux exploit called “Dirty Pipe” was discovered as vulnerability CVE-2022-0847, which is a security exploit present in some versions of the recent Linux kernel. A kernel is the core of an OS that acts as the mediator between apps and the hardware. This means if users of the mentioned devices allow any Android app to read files on their phone/computer, it can run malicious code or can just corrupt the file. This vulnerability has already shown its potential to get admin access to a system on the desktop/laptop versions of Linux. The Dirty Pipe exploit can easily allow attackers to take complete control of your device.

How does Dirty Pipe work?

As the name suggests, Dirty Pipe is related to Linux’s concepts of “pipes” and “pages”. The pipes here are used to get data from one app or process to another, while the pages are small bits of your device’s RAM. The Dirty Pipe exploit allows apps to manipulate Linux pipes so that the application can insert its data into a page of memory. This makes it easy for the attacker to either replace the contents of a file that the user is trying to access or even get full control of the user’s system.