USN-2744-1: Apport vulnerability

24 September 2015

Apport could be made to crash or overwrite files as an administrator.

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Releases

Packages

  • apport - automatically generate crash reports for debugging

Details

Halfdog discovered that Apport incorrectly handled kernel crash dump files.
A local attacker could use this issue to cause a denial of service, or
possibly elevate privileges. The default symlink protections for affected
releases should reduce the vulnerability to a denial of service.

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Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.

Learn more about Ubuntu Pro

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 15.04
Ubuntu 14.04
Ubuntu 12.04

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

References

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Further reading