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GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years

nebusec.ai

21–30 of 209 posts

Re: GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years

#21

Has anyone in infosec ever seen the term "use after free" before LLMs? Or is this basically an acronym claude invented? I say this because I see claude use this term all the time like its common knowledge but in 15+ years in tech never seen it myself. I've seen all kinds of terms used to describe memory errors: memory corruption, heap corruption, stack corruption, whatever, just never this acronym.

It has been a known bug class for quite some time.

Re: GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years

#22

Has anyone in infosec ever seen the term "use after free" before LLMs? Or is this basically an acronym claude invented? I say this because I see claude use this term all the time like its common knowledge but in 15+ years in tech never seen it myself. I've seen all kinds of terms used to describe memory errors: memory corruption, heap corruption, stack corruption, whatever, just never this acronym.

if you have spend any amount of time in low level c vulnerabilities you will have heard about it, it is a very common time on the low level/cybersec space.

Re: GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years

#23

Has anyone in infosec ever seen the term "use after free" before LLMs? Or is this basically an acronym claude invented? I say this because I see claude use this term all the time like its common knowledge but in 15+ years in tech never seen it myself. I've seen all kinds of terms used to describe memory errors: memory corruption, heap corruption, stack corruption, whatever, just never this acronym.

yes, it’s a very common term in infosec. I haven’t heard the “UAF” acronym before though

Re: GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years

#24

Tested on three Android devices (version 9, 13, 16) with different Firefox versions under 150 (had to modify for older). Two boot looped, I had to enter recovery and the other just powered off [0]. The demo modifies the wallpaper on supported Pixel devices. [0] IonStack https://rootme.nebusec.ai ____ Tip: Install a Chromium flavor browser (Chromite) separate from the main browser. Disable Javascript and hardware acce…

Thanks for testing, we currently only tested it on Pixel 10, but there are a few people on our repo creating PR to support other devices, you can take a look here https://github.com/NebuSec/CyberMeowfia

Re: GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years

#25

Has anyone in infosec ever seen the term "use after free" before LLMs? Or is this basically an acronym claude invented? I say this because I see claude use this term all the time like its common knowledge but in 15+ years in tech never seen it myself. I've seen all kinds of terms used to describe memory errors: memory corruption, heap corruption, stack corruption, whatever, just never this acronym.

Yes, it was a common attack vector in binary exploitation. Heap based attack vector like use after free, double free, heap overflows, and others are pretty neat. They force you to learn a lot about how malloc works.

There is a lot of cool work that went into making memory allocation work well; the different arenas, fast bins, chunk headers, etc. are super cool.

Re: GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years

#26
> This is the same shape as many other life-cycle bugs [...]

Claude-ism detected. IME with Claude Code an object does not have a type or definition, apparently, but rather a shape (or at least it reaches for that word before more technically-accurate ones). Problems are not of a similar class or type, but of the same shape. Functions are not defined by their signatures but by their shape. Who talks like this and how did it make its way into the training data so pervasively?

Re: GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years

#27

Has anyone in infosec ever seen the term "use after free" before LLMs? Or is this basically an acronym claude invented? I say this because I see claude use this term all the time like its common knowledge but in 15+ years in tech never seen it myself. I've seen all kinds of terms used to describe memory errors: memory corruption, heap corruption, stack corruption, whatever, just never this acronym.

This is and has been a common term in any systems programming concept for decades. You can, for example, search CVEs and easily find some from over 15 years ago: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2010-1119

It was even enumerated in the first pass of CWE as CWE-416 in 2006.

Re: GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years

#28
post #20

Has anyone in infosec ever seen the term "use after free" before LLMs? Or is this basically an acronym claude invented? I say this because I see claude use this term all the time like its common knowledge but in 15+ years in tech never seen it myself. I've seen all kinds of terms used to describe memory errors: memory corruption, heap corruption, stack corruption, whatever, just never this acronym.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years

#29

Has anyone in infosec ever seen the term "use after free" before LLMs? Or is this basically an acronym claude invented? I say this because I see claude use this term all the time like its common knowledge but in 15+ years in tech never seen it myself. I've seen all kinds of terms used to describe memory errors: memory corruption, heap corruption, stack corruption, whatever, just never this acronym.

You have somehow lived in a strange bubble.

2025: https://redis.io/blog/security-advisory-cve-2025-49844/ 2023: https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2023/q2/133 2022: https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-22-1690/ 2014: https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/patches/5.4/common/008_o...

It's an issue as old as time, or thereabouts.

Re: GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years

#30

Has anyone in infosec ever seen the term "use after free" before LLMs? Or is this basically an acronym claude invented? I say this because I see claude use this term all the time like its common knowledge but in 15+ years in tech never seen it myself. I've seen all kinds of terms used to describe memory errors: memory corruption, heap corruption, stack corruption, whatever, just never this acronym.

I haven't really seen it as an acronym "UAF", but I can't recall the first time I heard "use after free". It was probably in the previous century.

The idea that Claude came up with it is ridiculous.

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