libxml2 vulnerability

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2012-2807  

Applications using libxml2 could be made to crash or run programs as your login if they opened a specially crafted file.

Juri Aedla discovered that libxml2 incorrectly handled certain memory operations. If a user or application linked against libxml2 were tricked into opening a specially crafted XML file, an attacker could cause the application to crash or possibly execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking the program.

27 September 2012

libxml2 vulnerability

A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:

  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 11.10
  • Ubuntu 11.04
  • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

Summary

Applications using libxml2 could be made to crash or run programs as your login if they opened a specially crafted file.

Software Description

  • libxml2 - GNOME XML library

Details

Juri Aedla discovered that libxml2 incorrectly handled certain memory operations. If a user or application linked against libxml2 were tricked into opening a specially crafted XML file, an attacker could cause the application to crash or possibly execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking the program.

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
libxml2 - 2.7.8.dfsg-5.1ubuntu4.2
Ubuntu 11.10
libxml2 - 2.7.8.dfsg-4ubuntu0.4
Ubuntu 11.04
libxml2 - 2.7.8.dfsg-2ubuntu0.5
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
libxml2 - 2.7.6.dfsg-1ubuntu1.6
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
libxml2 - 2.6.31.dfsg-2ubuntu1.10

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.

References