USN-1587-1: libxml2 vulnerability

27 September 2012

Applications using libxml2 could be made to crash or run programs as your login if they opened a specially crafted file.

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Releases

Packages

Details

Juri Aedla discovered that libxml2 incorrectly handled certain memory
operations. If a user or application linked against libxml2 were tricked
into opening a specially crafted XML file, an attacker could cause the
application to crash or possibly execute arbitrary code with the privileges
of the user invoking the program.

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 8.04
Ubuntu 12.04
Ubuntu 11.10
Ubuntu 11.04
Ubuntu 10.04

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

References

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Further reading