USN-4728-1: snapd vulnerability

10 February 2021

An intended access restriction in snapd could be bypassed by container management snaps.

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Releases

Packages

  • snapd - Daemon and tooling that enable snap packages

Details

Gilad Reti and Nimrod Stoler discovered that snapd did not correctly specify cgroup
delegation when generating systemd service units for various container
management snaps. This could allow a local attacker to escalate privileges
via access to arbitrary devices of the container host from within a
compromised or malicious container.

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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 20.10
Ubuntu 20.04
Ubuntu 18.04
Ubuntu 16.04

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.
On Ubuntu, snapd will automatically refresh itself to snapd 2.48.3 which is
unaffected. Affected container management snaps will also automatically
refresh which will restart containers and resolve this vulnerability.

References

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Further reading