Use the internet? This Linux flaw could open you up to attack

A flaw in the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) used by Linux since late 2012 poses a serious threat to internet users, whether or not they use Linux directly.

That’s the key finding of a research study that’s scheduled to be presented Wednesday at the USENIX Security Symposium in Austin, Texas.

The TCP weakness, identified by researchers from the University of California at Riverside, enables attackers to hijack users’ internet communications completely remotely. It could be used to launch targeted attacks that track users’ online activity, forcibly terminate a communication, hijack a conversation between hosts or degrade the privacy guarantee of anonymity networks such as Tor, the researchers said.

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