USN-1916-1: Linux kernel (Raring HWE) vulnerability

29 July 2013

The system could be made to crash or run programs as an administrator.

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Packages

Details

An information leak was discovered in the Linux kernel when inotify is used
to monitor the /dev/ptmx device. A local user could exploit this flaw to
discover keystroke timing and potentially discover sensitive information
like password length.

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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.

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Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 12.04

After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make
all the necessary changes.

ATTENTION: Due to an unavoidable ABI change the kernel updates have
been given a new version number, which requires you to recompile and
reinstall all third party kernel modules you might have installed. If
you use linux-restricted-modules, you have to update that package as
well to get modules which work with the new kernel version. Unless you
manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages (e.g. linux-generic,
linux-server, linux-powerpc), a standard system upgrade will automatically
perform this as well.

References

Related notices

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