About

Dirty COW vulnerability is a type of privilege escalation exploit, which essentially means that it can be used to gain root-user access on any Linux-based system.
While security experts claim that such kinds of exploits are not uncommon, its easy-to-exploit nature and the fact that it has been around for more than 11 years is pretty worrisome.
Dirty COW gets its name from the copy-on-write (COW) mechanism in the kernel's memory management system.
Malicious programs can potentially set up a race condition to turn a read-only mapping of a file into a writable mapping.
Thus, an underprivileged user could utilize this flaw to elevate their privileges on the system.
By gaining root privileges, malicious programs obtain unrestricted access to the system. 
From there on, it can modify system files, deploy keyloggers, access personal data stored on your device, etc.
It's no secret that the Dirty COW vulnerability affects a large number of systems.
Thankfully, companies have sprung into action quickly to damage-control the situation. 
Most of the Linux-based systems like Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch-Linux have been patched. 
Google has deployed Play Protect to scan for affected apps on Android.