USN-6434-1: PMIx vulnerability

17 October 2023

PMIx could be made to overwrite files.

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Releases

Packages

  • pmix - Development files for the PMI library (OpenMPI )

Details

Francois Diakhate discovered that PMIx did not properly handle race
conditions in the pmix library, which could lead to unwanted privilege
escalation. An attacker could possibly use this issue to obtain ownership
of an arbitrary file on the filesystem, under the default configuration
of the application.

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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.

Learn more about Ubuntu Pro

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 22.04
Ubuntu 20.04
Ubuntu 18.04

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

References

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Further reading