USN-6588-1: PAM vulnerability

17 January 2024

PAM could be made to stop responding if it opened a specially crafted file.

Reduce your security exposure

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

Releases

Packages

  • pam - Pluggable Authentication Modules

Details

Matthias Gerstner discovered that the PAM pam_namespace module incorrectly
handled special files when performing directory checks. A local attacker
could possibly use this issue to cause PAM to stop responding, resulting in
a denial of service.

Reduce your security exposure

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 23.10
Ubuntu 23.04
Ubuntu 22.04
Ubuntu 20.04

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

References

Related notices