USN-793-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

2 July 2009

Linux kernel vulnerabilities

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Details

Igor Zhbanov discovered that NFS clients were able to create device nodes
even when root_squash was enabled. An authenticated remote attacker
could create device nodes with open permissions, leading to a loss of
privacy or escalation of privileges. Only Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04 were
affected. (CVE-2009-1072)

Dan Carpenter discovered that SELinux did not correctly handle
certain network checks when running with compat_net=1. A local
attacker could exploit this to bypass network checks. Default Ubuntu
installations do not enable SELinux, and only Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04 were
affected. (CVE-2009-1184)

Shaohua Li discovered that memory was not correctly initialized in the
AGP subsystem. A local attacker could potentially read kernel memory,
leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2009-1192)

Benjamin Gilbert discovered that the VMX implementation of KVM did
not correctly handle certain registers. An attacker in a guest VM
could exploit this to cause a host system crash, leading to a denial
of service. This only affected 32bit hosts. Ubuntu 6.06 was not
affected. (CVE-2009-1242)

Thomas Pollet discovered that the Amateur Radio X.25 Packet Layer Protocol
did not correctly validate certain fields. A remote attacker could exploit
this to read kernel memory, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2009-1265)

Trond Myklebust discovered that NFS did not correctly handle certain
long filenames. An authenticated remote attacker could exploit this to
cause a system crash, leading to a denial of service. Only Ubuntu 6.06
was affected. (CVE-2009-1336)

Oleg Nesterov discovered that the kernel did not correctly handle
CAP_KILL. A local user could exploit this to send signals to arbitrary
processes, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2009-1337)

Daniel Hokka Zakrisson discovered that signal handling was not correctly
limited to process namespaces. A local user could bypass namespace
restrictions, possibly leading to a denial of service. Only Ubuntu 8.04
was affected. (CVE-2009-1338)

Pavel Emelyanov discovered that network namespace support for IPv6 was
not correctly handled. A remote attacker could send specially crafted
IPv6 traffic that would cause a system crash, leading to a denial of
service. Only Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04 were affected. (CVE-2009-1360)

Neil Horman discovered that the e1000 network driver did not correctly
validate certain fields. A remote attacker could send a specially
crafted packet that would cause a system crash, leading to a denial of
service. (CVE-2009-1385)

Pavan Naregundi discovered that CIFS did not correctly check lengths
when handling certain mount requests. A remote attacker could send
specially crafted traffic to cause a system crash, leading to a denial
of service. (CVE-2009-1439)

Simon Vallet and Frank Filz discovered that execute permissions were
not correctly handled by NFSv4. A local user could bypass permissions
and run restricted programs, possibly leading to an escalation of
privileges. (CVE-2009-1630)

Jeff Layton and Suresh Jayaraman discovered buffer overflows in the CIFS
client code. A malicious remote server could exploit this to cause a
system crash or execute arbitrary code as root. (CVE-2009-1633)

Mikulas Patocka discovered that /proc/iomem was not correctly
initialized on Sparc. A local attacker could use this file to crash
the system, leading to a denial of service. Ubuntu 6.06 was not
affected. (CVE-2009-1914)

Miklos Szeredi discovered that OCFS2 did not correctly handle certain
splice operations. A local attacker could exploit this to cause
a system hang, leading to a denial of service. Ubuntu 6.06 was not
affected. (CVE-2009-1961)

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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 9.04
Ubuntu 8.10
Ubuntu 8.04
Ubuntu 6.06

After a standard system upgrade you need to reboot your computer to
effect the necessary changes.

ATTENTION: Due to an unavoidable ABI change for Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04
the kernel updates have been given a new version number, which requires
you to recompile and reinstall all third party kernel modules you
might have installed. If you use linux-restricted-modules, you have to
update that package as well to get modules which work with the new kernel
version. Unless you manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages
(e.g. linux-generic, linux-server, linux-powerpc), a standard system
upgrade will automatically perform this as well.