It's rather uninteresting to note, once again, that Ubuntu has decided to do this. I would like to know the (official, if any - unofficial/speculative otherwise) reason WHY they have not.
It does not seem that complicated to patch, and kernel upgrades are a dime a dozen these days. So what is making them delay a fix for so long?
However they also claim the mitigation "reduces exposure to this vulnerability but cannot fully prevent it", without elaborating on what that means or how it would be possible... I've also not seen anyone else make this claim.
I've seen another poster successfully updating their Kernel from Ubuntu's "proposed" branch which already has the fix. God knows why they don't merge it into stable.
That's what I call Steve Jobs style PR / Marketing you deflect the problem by making another problem to make it seem like you're fully aware. "You're holding the phone wrong"
For those not aware: Freenode.net is not Freenode as we all knew and loved it from the early 2000s to 2021. A hostile take-over of the Freenode LLC resulted in the loss of the domain name and some corporate assets. And the hostile takeover person, Andrew Lee, deleted the Freenode database. It no longer exists.
"Freenode" in 2026 is an entity actively hostile to open source software and while what they say here might be true, they are only saying it because it aligns with their biases. They are not a real news source.
My mitigation for this lack of patches has been using iptables.
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m u32 --u32 "0>>24&0xF=6:15" -j DROP
FreeBSD is quietly prevalent in commercial settings. NetApp, for example. Separate from NetApp, a good chunk of America's more sensitive production database clusters, other workloads, and some network applications are scheduled by Nomad or Kubernetes running directly on a kernel that is not Linux.
The most popular kernel is not necessarily appropriate for all use cases or types of environments where high-value targets reside.
Directly downstream of FreeBSD, HardenedBSD achieved its long history of invulnerability to what were exploitable vulnerabilities in upstream through its advancements in the operating system layer.
How do we feel now about having pointless services listening for no good reason on open ports?
And do we feel about running no firewall?
For example Linux works totally fine without running dhcpcd and without running avahi. But on many systems where people think they run "no service", these two shall have ports open on your network and happily listening.
Sure, it's typically "only" on your LAN: but how long before we see exploits affecting even private LANs?
> about having pointless services listening for no good reason
I think you'll find that for most people, plugging the laptop in and having the network immediately available and automatically seeing their local printer is a pretty good reason.
'Vulnerabilities will always arise. What matters is the speed and success with which they are resolved – and nobody provides fixes available faster than Canonical.'
this is a weak comment in general, but especially in this case considering ubuntu has a subscription where people are paying for timely security updates
It does not seem that complicated to patch, and kernel upgrades are a dime a dozen these days. So what is making them delay a fix for so long?
However they also claim the mitigation "reduces exposure to this vulnerability but cannot fully prevent it", without elaborating on what that means or how it would be possible... I've also not seen anyone else make this claim.
That's what I call Steve Jobs style PR / Marketing you deflect the problem by making another problem to make it seem like you're fully aware. "You're holding the phone wrong"
"Freenode" in 2026 is an entity actively hostile to open source software and while what they say here might be true, they are only saying it because it aligns with their biases. They are not a real news source.
My mitigation for this lack of patches has been using iptables.
I am hoping to see an indication that https://grsecurity.net/ patches preemptively mitigated CVE-2026-98432 but I'm feeling less optimistic.
This vulnerability has been a stark reminder to why in some places things are running on HardenedBSD instead of Linux.
The most popular kernel is not necessarily appropriate for all use cases or types of environments where high-value targets reside.
Directly downstream of FreeBSD, HardenedBSD achieved its long history of invulnerability to what were exploitable vulnerabilities in upstream through its advancements in the operating system layer.
_> but security thru obscurity
Arrogance is stupidity.
And do we feel about running no firewall?
For example Linux works totally fine without running dhcpcd and without running avahi. But on many systems where people think they run "no service", these two shall have ports open on your network and happily listening.
Sure, it's typically "only" on your LAN: but how long before we see exploits affecting even private LANs?
Tighten your stuff up guys.
I think you'll find that for most people, plugging the laptop in and having the network immediately available and automatically seeing their local printer is a pretty good reason.
how you refresh dhcp lease if there is no service taking care of ? Why you think DHCP is pointless ?