USN-1968-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

27 September 2013

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.

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Releases

Packages

Details

Vince Weaver discovered a flaw in the perf subsystem of the Linux kernel on
ARM platforms. A local user could exploit this flaw to gain privileges or
cause a denial of service (system crash). (CVE-2013-4254)

A failure to validate block numbers was discovered in the Linux kernel’s
implementation of the XFS filesystem. A local user can cause a denial of
service (system crash) if they can mount, or cause to be mounted a
corrupted or special crafted XFS filesystem. (CVE-2013-1819)

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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.