Computer Mega Bug

Experts have discovered a major computer security vulnerability that could potentially affect hundreds of thousands of devices, apps and services.

17:08 18 February 2016

A major computer security vulnerability was discovered in glibc, an open-source library code that is widely used in internet-connected devices.

 

Although there is no publicly known attack code that uses the flaw, experts said that it could potentially affect hundreds of thousands of devices, apps and services.

 

Google team has published a blog post about the discovery and provided details as to how the flaw can affect commonly-used code that allows remote access to a device - be it a computer, internet router, or other connected piece of equipment.

 

A patch to fix the problem has been dispatched by Google engineers who are working together with security engineers at Red Hat.

 

"It's not a sky-is-falling scenario," said Washington D.C-based security researcher Kenneth White.

 

"But it's true there's a very real prospect that a sizable portion of internet-facing services are at risk for hackers to crash, or worse, run remote code to attack others."

 

The scale of the problem is yet to be determined because it is unclear how many devices and systems make use of the glibc code.