USN-2598-1: Linux kernel vulnerability

5 May 2015

The system could be made to run programs as an administrator.

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Details

A race condition between chown() and execve() was discovered in the Linux
kernel. A local attacker could exploit this race by using chown on a
setuid-user-binary to gain administrative privileges.

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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.

References

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