Researcher Says AI Helped Develop Linux Traffic-Control Race Into Root Exploit

STAR Labs has published a Linux kernel exploit that turns an ordinary local user into root on the CentOS Stream 9 build it targeted. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-53264 (CVSS score: 7.8), is a use-after-free race in the kernel's network traffic-control subsystem.Researcher Lee Jia Jie said artificial intelligence (AI) helped him find the bug and speed up exploit development. This is local

The article describes a Linux kernel use-after-free race condition in the net/sched traffic-control subsystem, tracked as CVE-2026-53264, which allows a local user to escalate privileges to root on affected systems such as CentOS Stream 9.[5] The researcher explicitly states that AI tools assisted both in identifying the vulnerability and accelerating exploit development, demonstrating operational use of AI in offensive security workflows.[5] From a RealGround perspective, this illustrates malicious AI use risk: capable adversaries can leverage AI to more quickly discover kernel-level bugs and weaponize them, shrinking patch windows and increasing the likelihood of local privilege-escalation exploitation on multi-tenant and containerized hosts. Organizations should assume attackers are using AI in this way and adopt continuous AI-focused red teaming and hardened traffic-control configurations (e.g., restricting CAP_NET_ADMIN and unprivileged namespaces) to assess and reduce exploitability of similar AI-assisted findings.[5]