Worried about Dirty COW? You should be, because last week a serious vulnerability was discovered in the Linux kernel which runs the majority of the world's servers. It was so critical that it can lead to a privilege escalation, denial of service, or information leaks. And it's called Dirty COW! Why the name Dirty COW? It gets its name from the Linux sub-system, called Copy-On-Write or COW, in which it appears.
You may well have seen reports in national dailies about it, and now it's spread to Android Phones as well. Basically, if you've got a website then you are potentially at serious risk because it could take weeks before web hosts get round to patching the kernel on their servers. Then the server will need to be rebooted resulting in downtime.
Unless of course you're a WebSpain client! Because when we switched to Cloud Linux earlier this year we also purchased Kernel Care as part of the package. KernelCare keeps Linux servers secure with all the latest kernel patches available immediately, and they're automatically applied without needing to reboot the server. So no security issues and no downtime!
It keeps running permanently and checks for any kernel security updates every 4 hours. If there's an update available, it just applies it without any human intervention or downtime. Our kernel was patched on 21st October......literally as the news broke.
If you're not a WebSpain client then you just have to cross your fingers that somebody is going to take action at some point to protect your business interests. Timescale is impossible to estimate......but I can guarantee that the less you paid for your hosting then the longer it will take. If it's even patched at all! But that's what happens when your main priority is cheap!
It just demonstrates, once again, how proactive we've always been in this area, and how not all web hosting is created equal.
If you're serious about your business then you need a serious provider. If you're not serious about your business, or perhaps you just don't care......then there's plenty of providers out there that would be a perfect fit for you. But we're not one of them!
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