A flaw in recent versions of FreeBSD can give unprivileged users control over the OS, according to a German researcher.

“The flaw is present in FreeBSD 8.0 and is known to affect versions 7.1 and 7.2 of the open source OS, Nikolaos Rangos told The Register,” according to The Register’s Dan Goodin. “He said it was ‘unbelievably simple’ to exploit.”

“To exploit the bug, hackers would need local access to the vulnerable machine,” Goodin adds. “To use the attack code remotely, it’s conceivable it could be used in concert with another vulnerability, such as one residing in a Web application running on the box.”

Click here to read the story at The Register.