USN-695-1: shadow vulnerability

Releases

• Ubuntu 8.10
• Ubuntu 8.04
• Ubuntu 7.10
• Ubuntu 6.06

Packages

• shadow -

Details

Paul Szabo discovered a race condition in login. While setting up
tty permissions, login did not correctly handle symlinks. If a local
attacker were able to gain control of the system utmp file, they could
cause login to change the ownership and permissions on arbitrary files,
leading to a root privilege escalation.

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 8.10

• login - 1:4.1.1-1ubuntu1.2

Ubuntu 8.04

• login - 1:4.0.18.2-1ubuntu2.2

Ubuntu 7.10

• login - 1:4.0.18.1-9ubuntu0.2

Ubuntu 6.06

• login - 1:4.0.13-7ubuntu3.4

In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the
necessary changes.

References

• CVE-2008-5394