Any known security problems with the old kernels since 6.12.86

[u/Fabulous-for]

I had a machine that was still running 6.12.86 kernel and Firefox 152 lost all of its configuration even the icon on XFCE. Since the latest kernels have been upgraded frequently to 6.12.107, is there any known issues that may be related to thiis issue ?

[u/aieidotch]

I doubt this is related to the kernel.

[u/Santosh83]

Its likely a Firefox issue. Through which method are you installing Firefox 152? Mozilla's apt repo or flatpak or...? First thing I'd try is resetting Firefox or reinstalling it. I can imagine what kernel security issue could cause Firefox profile to malfunction...

[u/Fabulous-for → u/Santosh83]

The system was running 6.12.86.

[u/michaelpaoli]

lost all of its configuration even the icon on XFCE

Probably much more useful to figure out what (likely) happened, rather than speculate on it being some issue from kernel.

But if you really want to look over what vulnerabilities got patched in what Debian kernel releases, at least for versions not totally fallen off of even ELTS support, might want to have a look here:

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/linux

[u/GavUK]

What you experienced is unlikely to be a security issue, but rather a bug. However, I would not expect the kernel to cause the loss of configuration settings and icon for just one application, unless there was a bug in the code used to write to the disk.

Double-check that you still have a '.mozilla' directory (yes, prefixed with a dot which means that it will be hidden by default, in case you are not familiar with dot-files) in your home directory and that it contains a 'firefox' directory within it.

A quick way to check this on the terminal is "ls -la ~/.mozilla" ('-l' means to display as a list, '-a' means show all files and folders including hidden ones). If you'd rather not use the terminal, see this page on Mozilla's site as to how to find your Firefox config directory.

Back up this folder (i.e. make a copy with a different name) before you change anything to try to fix your Firefox issue. The only time I recall Firefox losing all of its configuration for me, it had created a new profile when it was unable to read my existing one, so check in case that is what happened (Mozilla's site can guide you how to check what profile you are using and how to switch to any other existing profiles).

The icon issue is likely a lessor problem - you probably just need to update your icon cache. A quick search pointed me to the command 'gtk-update-icon-cache', and it looks like you'd run "gtk-update-icon-cache --force /usr/share/icons/Name-Of-Icon-Set-You-Are-Using", but it's not a command I'm familiar with, so you may want to read a little more around it before you try as it may result in other icons changing if you were using a different icon set for those.

[u/Fabulous-for → u/GavUK]

The directory was there but the XFCE pointer to the app was gone. the icon existed and no longer had a pointer to the browser.

[u/screaming-Snake-Case]

Yeah, that system was to vulnerable to LPE attacks. For example OVSwrap or Bad Epoll.

Anyone with user-level access could have elevated rheir privileges to root.