Make sure you’re updated, and the headline is a bit sensationalist. As these buffer overflow errors are due to bad programming practices and not checking data size and directing addressing memory. This is just a consequence of programmers being responsible for safeguards unless you’re using a modern language like Rust that prevents these types of errors.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/X.Org-CVE-2024-9632
Written by Michael Larabel in X.Org
CVE-2024-9632 was made public today as the latest security vulnerability affecting the X.Org Server. The CVE-2024-9632 security issue has been present in the codebase now for 18 years and can lead to local privilege escalation.
Introduced in the X.Org Server 1.1.1 release back in 2006, CVE-2024-9632 affects the X.Org Server as well as XWayland too. By providing a modified bitmap to the X.Org Server, a heap-based buffer overflow privilege escalation can occur.
This security issue is within _XkbSetCompatMap() and stems from not updating the heap size properly and can lead to local privilege escalation if the server is run as root or as a remote code execution with X11 over SSH.
The X.Org security advisory announcement can be read on the mailing list. The X.Org Server 21.1.14 and XWayland 24.1.4 releases fix the issue, which was discovered by the Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative. Trend Micro continues uncovering many X.Org security vulnerabilities over the years.