Last week, Linux was tagged with a local NULL pointer flaw that could have led to a privilege escalation issue. Linux founder Linus Torvalds pushed a patch upstream quickly and now that patch is in the Linux 2.6.31 -rc6 milestone. Torvalds notes in the 2.6.31 rc6 releases notes that the issue wasn't as bad as it could have been, and that he would have likely delayed the fix were it not for the fact that a private list, apparently wasn't private after all.