USN-1616-1: Python 3.1 vulnerabilities
24 October 2012
Several security issues were fixed in Python 3.1.
Releases
Packages
- python3.1 - An interactive high-level object-oriented language (version 3.1)
Details
It was discovered that Python would prepend an empty string to sys.path
under certain circumstances. A local attacker with write access to the
current working directory could exploit this to execute arbitrary code.
This issue only affected Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. (CVE-2008-5983)
It was discovered that the audioop module did not correctly perform input
validation. If a user or automatated system were tricked into opening a
crafted audio file, an attacker could cause a denial of service via
application crash. These issues only affected Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
(CVE-2010-1634, CVE-2010-2089)
It was discovered that Python distutils contained a race condition when
creating the ~/.pypirc file. A local attacker could exploit this to obtain
sensitive information. (CVE-2011-4944)
It was discovered that SimpleXMLRPCServer did not properly validate its
input when handling HTTP POST requests. A remote attacker could exploit
this to cause a denial of service via excessive CPU utilization.
(CVE-2012-0845)
It was discovered that Python was susceptible to hash algorithm attacks.
An attacker could cause a denial of service under certian circumstances.
This update adds the '-R' command line option and honors setting the
PYTHONHASHSEED environment variable to 'random' to salt str and datetime
objects with an unpredictable value. (CVE-2012-1150)
Serhiy Storchaka discovered that the UTF16 decoder in Python did not
properly reset internal variables after error handling. An attacker could
exploit this to cause a denial of service via memory corruption.
(CVE-2012-2135)
Update instructions
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
Ubuntu 11.04
Ubuntu 10.04
In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.