Linux systems at risk from major security flaw

A major security flaw has been uncovered in a basic Linux application that can put systems at risk from cyber-attack.

The vulnerability, discovered by researchers at Linux vendor Red Hat, is a buffer overflow in the zlib file decompression library software.

The zlib component is used by the Linux kernel, but can also be used by other operating systems, making the vulnerability potentially much wider than just the open source community.

Linux security expert Guardian Digital released an advisory on the problem, but said that no exploits for the hole are currently known.

Guardian Digital advised users to contact their Linux vendor for patches.