XML-RPC for C and C++ could be made to cause a denial of service by consuming excessive CPU and memory resources.
USN-1527-1 fixed vulnerabilities in Expat. This update provides the corresponding updates for XML-RPC for C and C++. Both issues described in the original advisory affected XML-RPC for C and C++ in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, 11.04, 11.10 and 12.04 LTS.
10 September 2012
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
XML-RPC for C and C++ could be made to cause a denial of service by consuming excessive CPU and memory resources.
USN-1527-1 fixed vulnerabilities in Expat. This update provides the corresponding updates for XML-RPC for C and C++. Both issues described in the original advisory affected XML-RPC for C and C++ in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, 11.04, 11.10 and 12.04 LTS.
Original advisory details:
It was discovered that Expat computed hash values without restricting the ability to trigger hash collisions predictably. If a user or application linked against Expat were tricked into opening a crafted XML file, an attacker could cause a denial of service by consuming excessive CPU resources. (CVE-2012-0876)
Tim Boddy discovered that Expat did not properly handle memory reallocation when processing XML files. If a user or application linked against Expat were tricked into opening a crafted XML file, an attacker could cause a denial of service by consuming excessive memory resources. This issue only affected Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, 10.04 LTS, 11.04 and 11.10. (CVE-2012-1148)
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 upgrade you need to restart any applications linked against XML-RPC for C and C++ to effect the necessary changes.
Vulmon