USN-385-1: tar vulnerability

27 November 2006

tar vulnerability

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Releases

Details

Teemu Salmela discovered that tar still handled the deprecated
GNUTYPE_NAMES record type. This record type could be used to create
symlinks that would be followed while unpacking a tar archive. If a
user or an automated system were tricked into unpacking a specially
crafted tar file, arbitrary files could be overwritten with user
privileges.

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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 6.10
  • tar - 1.15.91-2ubuntu0.3
Ubuntu 6.06
  • tar - 1.15.1-2ubuntu2.1
Ubuntu 5.10
  • tar - 1.15.1-2ubuntu0.2

In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the
necessary changes.

References

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