USN-1177-1: QEMU vulnerability

27 July 2011

QEMU could be made to run with adminstrator group privileges under certain circumstances.

Reduce your security exposure

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

Releases

Packages

  • qemu-kvm - Machine emulator and virtualizer

Details

Andrew Griffiths discovered that QEMU did not correctly drop privileges
when using the 'runas' argument. Under certain circumstances a local
attacker could exploit this to escalate privileges.

Reduce your security exposure

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 11.04
Ubuntu 10.10
Ubuntu 10.04

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

References