USN-5230-1: App::cpanminus vulnerability

24 January 2022

App::cpanminus could be made to bypass signature verification if it received specially crafted input.

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Releases

Packages

  • cpanminus - script to get, unpack, build and install modules from CPAN

Details

It was discovered that App::cpanminus did not properly verify CHECKSUMS files.
An attacker could possibly use this issue to bypass signature verification,
gaining access to sensitive data or possibly executing unauthorized code.

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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 20.04
Ubuntu 18.04
Ubuntu 16.04

After a standard system update, configure App::cpanminus to use only trusted
CPAN mirrors over HTTPS using the option on the command line or
environment variable.

References

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Further reading