USN-2651-1: GNU patch vulnerabilities

22 June 2015

Several security issues were fixed in GNU patch.

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Releases

Packages

  • patch - Apply a diff file to an original

Details

Jakub Wilk discovered that GNU patch did not correctly handle file paths in
patch files. An attacker could specially craft a patch file that could
overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user invoking the program.
This issue only affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. (CVE-2010-4651)

László Böszörményi discovered that GNU patch did not correctly handle some
patch files. An attacker could specially craft a patch file that could cause a
denial of service. (CVE-2014-9637)

Jakub Wilk discovered that GNU patch did not correctly handle symbolic links in
git style patch files. An attacker could specially craft a patch file that
could overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user invoking the
program. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.10.
(CVE-2015-1196)

Jakub Wilk discovered that GNU patch did not correctly handle file renames in
git style patch files. An attacker could specially craft a patch file that
could overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user invoking the
program. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.10.
(CVE-2015-1395)

Jakub Wilk discovered the fix for CVE-2015-1196 was incomplete for GNU patch.
An attacker could specially craft a patch file that could overwrite arbitrary
files with the privileges of the user invoking the program. This issue only
affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.10. (CVE-2015-1396)

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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 14.10
Ubuntu 14.04
Ubuntu 12.04

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