The DirtyCOW vulnerability allows users to take over your system.
Here comes what we’re calling a bus-scenario BWAIN.
DirtyCOW, as it’s been satirically dubbed, is a kernel bug in Linux that’s been around for at least 11 years and as good as allows any existing user to turn themselves into the all-powerful system administrator known in the Linux world as root.
To explain: a bus scenario is where you don’t hear much about a particular security topic for a while, and then it comes up twice in quick succession, like those proverbial buses that keep you waiting for ages and then arrive in a bunch.
A BWAIN is a Bug With An Impressive Name, an attention-grabbing trick started by the infamous Heartbleed vulnerabiity.