An attacker could send crafted input to xrdb and cause it to run programs as root.
Sebastian Krahmer discovered that the xrdb utility incorrectly filtered crafted hostnames. An attacker could use this flaw with a malicious DHCP server or with a remote xdmcp login and execute arbitrary code, resulting in root privilege escalation.
6 April 2011
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
An attacker could send crafted input to xrdb and cause it to run programs as root.
Sebastian Krahmer discovered that the xrdb utility incorrectly filtered crafted hostnames. An attacker could use this flaw with a malicious DHCP server or with a remote xdmcp login and execute arbitrary code, resulting in root privilege escalation.
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.
After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make all the necessary changes.
Vulmon