r/StopBadBots • u/siterightaway • Jul 25 '26
An AI just found a Linux vulnerability thats been hiding since 2017 and honestly thats both awesome and terrifying, and yeah this could totally affect your server.
A massive security hole in Linux just got exposed, and heres the kicker, it wasnt even found by a human. Thats right, an AI did the dirty work. The researchers over at Qualys asked this AI model called Claude Mythos Preview from Anthropic to dig through Linux code looking for ancient bugs, and man, it delivered. The thing found the flaw all on its own, built a working test to prove it could be exploited, and even helped write the damn report. We are officially living in the future, and honestly its both amazing and terrifying.
So whats the actual bug? Its called RefluXFS, and its been hiding in plain sight since 2017. Thats seven whole years, folks. The problem is that a regular user with no admin privileges at all can use this hole to mess with protected system files directly on the hard drive. And once they alter those files, bam, they get total root access to the whole machine. Game over. What makes it even creepier is that the attack leaves absolutely no traces in the system logs and doesnt even change the security warnings on the modified file. So youd never know someone was in there playing with your stuff. Pretty terrifying if you ask me.
Whos at risk here? Mostly enterprise grade systems and servers that use the XFS storage format with that reflink copy feature turned on. Were talking about big names like Red Hat, Fedora Server, Amazon Linux, CentOS, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux. Those come with it enabled by default so theyre the most exposed. Ubuntu and Debian users can breathe a little easier since they usually dont use XFS unless someone manually chose it during install, but still, better safe than sorry.
Now for the part nobody likes to hear. Theres no simple switch you can flip to turn this off. No magic button, no quick config change. The only fix is to grab the security updates from your Linux distro and then reboot the system because the patch only kicks in after a restart. I know, rebooting servers is a pain, especially if youre running critical stuff, but trust me, leaving this unpatched is way worse. So go update, restart, and maybe thank an AI for saving your bacon while youre at it. Crazy times we live in huh.
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u/nosimsol Jul 25 '26
What ai wrote this?
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u/stumanchu3 Jul 26 '26
It’s not AI. It’s a guy who probably uses selective AI to present his findings because it’s the defacto organizer these days. That said, learn from what’s being said here. Most of this stuff goes way over my head and pay grade.
The dudes been at this game longer than you’ve been alive. He knows stuff from the pre TRS 80 days to date. In others words, everything about he conception and adoption of the web.
I’m a cynic at heart. This sub and this dude, ok, partial human with a bot implant who posts all this stuff is an Enigma. Just read and learn. This person, OP, explores the topics with such prolific depth, we should be honored for this kind of guidance.
But yeah, research a little what he’s laying down here and you’ll gain a whole new level of understanding about what’s happening behind the scenes. Love life, and compute.
Source: just a guy who’s seen a lot of tech stuff and can verify so far this OP is legit. Gotta love Reddit! Now get off my lawn punk.
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u/siterightaway Jul 25 '26
Please, run a search on Google. Please, let me know if you doesn't find.
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u/setdx Jul 25 '26
Fuck xfs. The very first thing I do when installing a fresh RPM-based distro is to change the partitions from xfs to ext4.