USN-234-1: cpio vulnerability

3 January 2006

cpio vulnerability

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Releases

Details

Richard Harms discovered that cpio did not sufficiently validate file
properties when creating archives. Files with e. g. a very large size
caused a buffer overflow. By tricking a user or an automatic backup
system into putting a specially crafted file into a cpio archive, a
local attacker could probably exploit this to execute arbitrary code
with the privileges of the target user (which is likely root in an
automatic backup system).

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Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 5.10
  • cpio -
Ubuntu 5.04
  • cpio -
Ubuntu 4.10
  • cpio -

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

References

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Further reading