USN-2588-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

30 April 2015

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.

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Releases

Packages

Details

A stack overflow was discovered in the the microcode loader for the intel
x86 platform. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of
service (kernel crash) or to potentially execute code with kernel
privileges. (CVE-2015-2666)

It was discovered that the Linux kernel's IPv6 networking stack has a flaw
that allows using route advertisement (RA) messages to set the 'hop_limit'
to values that are too low. An unprivileged attacker on a local network
could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service (IPv6 messages
dropped). (CVE-2015-2922)

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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 14.04

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

ATTENTION: Due to an unavoidable ABI change the kernel updates have
been given a new version number, which requires you to recompile and
reinstall all third party kernel modules you might have installed. If
you use linux-restricted-modules, you have to update that package as
well to get modules which work with the new kernel version. Unless you
manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages (e.g. linux-generic,
linux-server, linux-powerpc), a standard system upgrade will automatically
perform this as well.