Quickly dove into this.

1. Yes, it's real.

2. Current chain can write any arbitrary content to any user-readable file (into the page cache).

3. Current chain relies on an available target suid binary that you can open() as a lowpriv user.

4. Current exploit relies on that binary being /bin/su and then being able to execve(/bin/sh, 0, 0) (which doesn't work on alpine, etc.). The former is easily replaced in the code. The latter needs a rebuilt payload ELF (also easy).

5. The authors say they have other chains (including ones that allow container escapes). I believe them.

6. A mildly de-minified PoC for Alpine with a new payload ELF is at hackerspace[pl]/~q3k/alpine.py . You'll need /bin/ping from iputils. This should be now somewhat reliable on any distro that has a `/bin/sh` and any setuid-and-readable binary (you'll just need to find it on your own).