Can't wait for one that'll work on Android so I can maybe root some otherwise useless old phones
this post was submitted on 07 May 2026
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What would you use the old phones for out of curiosity?
A middle finger to those you're jailbreaking from.
I'm not the person you replied to, but I would love to have more ARM hardware for running tests on. A lot of what I write needs to be separately tested on each architecture.
I've encountered a couple of people who use them as remote cameras to observe their 3D printers. That suggests a bunch of other possibilities for things you want to be able to watch or listen to without standing over them and without buying an extra webcam to cover what might be a temporary need.
They are less expensive.
EDIT:
Sorry, I misread the parent comment.
You would use them for literally anything you typically or potentially could use a phone for.
If you are not playing video games on your phone... there is basically no common reason to have a top spec brand new phone.
What do I want my phone to do?
Make calls, send messages, run a web browser, check emails, take a picture or video every once in a while, act as a notepad, check a weather forecast, have some map explorer, use some entirely 2D proprietary apps for things like... groceries or hailing a ride or checking my bank balance.
Pretty sure that right there is about 80% of people's phone use case.
You do not need top spec hardware to do any of that.
You have the gaming thing to do the gaming stuff.
Removing all the system-level bloat that makes them unpleasant to use, perhaps stripping one down to the level of a fancy MP3 player with its microSD slot. Also having "disposable" phones to play with various rooted tweaks. All of my easily-rootable phones are too valuable as daily drivers to experiment on, while all of the ones I don't care about also don't have rooting methods yet.
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Ok this is the first time I try one of these exploits and it works on my system, I'm currently very spooked.
On the other hand, this may allow me to root my LG WebOS TV?
Now that i Didn't consider
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Good to see these exploits being found and worked on
This was leaked early. There is a mitigation (see link for confirmation):
sh -c "printf 'install esp4 /bin/false\ninstall esp6 /bin/false\ninstall rxrpc /bin/false\n' > /etc/modprobe.d/dirtyfrag.conf; rmmod esp4 esp6 rxrpc 2>/dev/null; true"
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In the 90s I compiled all my kernels at home from source with just the drivers I needed. Only installed the packages I needed. Only enabled the services I needed. The Unix way. When the kernel added modules I was still only compiling a subset and generally loading them manually.
Obviously that doesn't work for most users and distros sensibly started shipping with modules compiled for practically every need. Usually when I view distro security alerts they are for packages I don't install. But I have all these damn kernel modules just waiting to automatically load. I know I can blacklist them individually but I wonder if there is a way to profile the modules I use and use a deny all/whitelist approach instead?
modprobed-db can create a profile of the kernel modules that get loaded by your system over time. You can feed that directly into make localmodconfig to build a kernel that only includes those modules, or use the data to build a modprobe whitelist.
Hm? Somehow, lemmy.zip messed up the proxying, (clickable link)? Good thing you've pasted it plaintext.
Hahaha no I'm just an idiot and accidentally swapped the url and text, thanks for catching that - fixed now
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Clearly you know of lot about this. Here are some comments for the next human.
Deny all modules seems more possible than a whitelist approach. To deny all, the command is likely "sysctl kernel.modules_disabled=1".
Whitelisting is harder. One could store a list of all loaded modules on a working system. Store a list of all kernel modules currently installed on the system. Compare the lists and remove from the "all" list the "running" list (grep will do this) and write it to the blacklist file.
The problem with the Whitelisting approach is that it needs to run after every kernel module install (which is doable).
If the above is the case, then someone must have automated this already, but I cannot find it quickly. (I checked Debian's package repository.)
Clearly you know of lot about this.
Nah, that is the problem. It all got so dynamic and easy I don't really know how the hundreds of active modules on my desktop are loaded, why or in what order anymore. The days when I could list a handful of modules to load at boot are long gone I think unless its an embedded device or perhaps a simple server.
Setting modules_disabled might be viable for a relatively static system. I have seen that one when looking at hardening servers in the past but thought it was a bit extreme. Perhaps not.
may become useful if i forgot my password.
Or somebody else’s password
Update: Kernel 7.0.5 just released
Fixes: cac2661c53f3 ("esp4: Avoid skb_cow_data whenever possible")
Fixes: 03e2a30f6a27 ("esp6: Avoid skb_cow_data whenever possible")
Fixes: 7da0dde68486 ("ip, udp: Support MSG_SPLICE_PAGES")
Fixes: 6d8192bd69bb ("ip6, udp6: Support MSG_SPLICE_PAGES")
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It was patched in almalinux though, and it was how this exploit got exposed before disclosure.
At lest this is what I read
Well shit. I wonder if all Linux systems are affected, the testing in the repo doesn't cover Arch for instance. For now I'd assume the answer is yes.
Yea it works on arch, I just tested on my own PC:
OS: Arch Linux x86_64
Kernel: Linux 7.0.3-arch1-2
❯ ./exp
[root@arch dirtyfrag]# ls
README.md assets exp exp.c
[root@arch dirtyfrag]# whoami
root
I updated it last week.
Edit: I just ran yay -Suy to update everything and still works.
Have you tried updating your system with a less cheerful command? Like damn -Syu
I also just verified it worked on my Arch install. But running the mitigation command and rebooting effectively blocked it, and I'm on the Arch LTS kernel. I think the disabled modules are related to IPSec, which most desktop users don't really need.
Its a kernel exploit, so probably. But I just checked my arch installs,and I don't have any of the kernel modules loaded. ~~Loading requires root anyway, so I think this may be fairly limited in reality?~~
Edit: seems the modules get loaded automatically :(
don't see 'em loaded here, either. trixie (dietpi) server, aurora (f44) desktop
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I tried on nixos and did not work, but maybe the paths needs adjustments
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