I work directly on live Linux server incidents — from compromised systems and malware infections to high CPU usage, service crashes, and production outages. My focus is fast diagnosis, controlled recovery, and long-term hardening.
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS upgrade
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon) is here with Linux 7.0, Wayland-only GNOME 50, systemd 259.5, and modern security defaults. 5-year LTS support. Step-by-step upgrade from 24.04 LTS, key features, and when to upgrade.
Local privilege escalation
DirtyDecrypt Linux kernel vulnerability (CVE-2026-31635) now has working PoC exploit for root escalation. Targets systems with CONFIG_RXGK enabled (AFS support). Affects rolling-release distros. Part of recent "Dirty*" vulnerability wave—patch or blacklist modules immediately.
Windows zero-day MiniPlasma (CVE-2020-17103) still works on fully patched Windows 11 despite claimed 2020 patch. Local privilege escalation via Cloud Filter driver. PoC released public. Latest in researcher's protest against Microsoft's vulnerability handling.
NGINX CVE-2026-42945 (CVSS 9.2) actively exploited in the wild. Heap buffer overflow in rewrite module allows worker DoS (reliable) or RCE if ASLR disabled. Patch versions 0.6.27–1.30.0 immediately.
Incident Summary Grafana disclosed a compromised GitHub token that allowed unauthorized access to its codebase. The attacker downloaded the repository and attempted extortion; Grafana refused to pay and declined to negotiate. No customer data was impacted. Timeline: Attacker gained access at an undisclosed date; compromise discovered "recently" (May
Putting HTTP Basic Auth in front of WordPress admin trips up most people for two reasons: WordPress's rewrite rules eat any wp-login.php protection placed in the wrong spot, and blocking /wp-admin/ wholesale kills admin-ajax.php — breaking WooCommerce, Elementor, heartbeat API, and most plugin AJAX. This tutorial gets
Load average is one of the most-cited and least-useful metrics on a Linux box. It conflates running and uninterruptible processes, smooths over 1/5/15-minute windows, and tells you nothing about what the system is waiting on. A load of 8 on a 16-core box could mean perfectly healthy CPU
Linux powers the internet. Cloud platforms, databases, APIs, web services, containers, and internal infrastructure all run Linux. That ubiquity makes it an enormous target. But the reason so many Linux servers get compromised isn't because Linux is inherently broken. It's because once a system is deployed,
Disclaimer: I've spent the last two weeks writing about NGINX Rift, Fragnasia, and various Linux kernel catastrophes. Linux has been hogging all the vulnerability spotlight. So when a Windows BitLocker bypass drops this week, I'm covering it not because I suddenly became a Windows security expert,
QEMU 11.0 arrived after a four-release candidate cycle with significant architecture drops, improved VM migration, and expanded CPU/architecture support. The headline: 32-bit host support is gone, and several deprecated machine types have been removed. If you're running QEMU on legacy 32-bit hardware or managing VMs with
Canonical released Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon) as the latest long-term support release. Shipping with Linux 7.0, APT 3.2's native rollback features, Wayland-only GNOME 50, and significant server component upgrades, this release targets systems wanting the latest technologies with 5–15 years of support. Support
CRITICAL: A logic bug in the Linux XFRM ESP-in-TCP subsystem allows unprivileged local attackers to write arbitrary bytes to kernel memory and gain root privileges. It's been quietly disclosed, a working proof-of-concept exists, and all major Linux distributions are patching. If you're running an older kernel