Copy Fail vulnerability allows attackers to gain root access on virtually any modern Linux distribution


A working exploit written in Python (later released in other programming languages as well) consists of about ten lines of code and uses standard system calls that are indistinguishable from normal system activity.

Kaspersky explain what the CVE-2026-31431 vulnerability, unofficially named as Copy Fail and published on April 29, is. Kaspersky also have some advice on its mitigation and detection. Presumably, the root of the problem is commit 72548b093ee3, added to the Linux kernel in 2017. It introduced support for in-place operations for AEAD encryption in the algif_aead module, which led to a buffer handling error. Thus, the vulnerability affects kernels released between 2017 and 2026.

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Source: Kaspersky


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