Beacown (Linux WiFi Exploit)

github.com

94 points·pdenton··23 comments

[x] Catchy name

[ ] Catchy logo

Poor effort, only 50% of the way there. (No marks awarded for a working exploit, marketing doesn't care about that)

Edit: Marks should also be deducted for a lack of scary text claiming that everyone should panic.

Some sort of evil bee/cow hybrid with psychic (wifi) waves would work well as a logo, to help generate buzz.

I was thinking something similar. A cow with x's over the eyes, possibly glowing red; with antennae's instead of horns with wifi waves coming off them.

I think we need a vulnerability buzzword bingo.

Just to be clear, everyone really should panic. Right?

Plenty of Android devices have kernels that are too old to be vulnerable. Versions 5.1 and newer are vulnerable.

Which versions of Android would that translate to?

It seems to me that Android version and kernel version are not linked in any meaningful way.

My phone is Android 12 and the kernel is 4.19.x, which initially came out in 2018 (but is an LTS one, so it's fine).

Older kernels are instead vulnerable to older bugs, since fixed, of not less severity, but more systematically exploited.

Do you have any particular exploits in mind?

The idea that you could gain RCE without the user doing anything except being in range of a wifi hotspot—no need to run an app, load a website, or even open an image—strikes me as exceptionally concerning. It's not quite the holy grail of "connect this device to the internet anywhere in the world and get hacked within minutes", but it's coming close.

Current discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33200171.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com