USN-173-1 fixed a buffer overflow vulnerability in the PCRE library. However, it was found that the various python packages and gnumeric contain static copies of the library code, so these packages need to be updated as well.
In gnumeric this bug could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user if the user was tricked into opening a specially crafted spreadsheet document.
31 August 2005
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
USN-173-1 fixed a buffer overflow vulnerability in the PCRE library. However, it was found that the various python packages and gnumeric contain static copies of the library code, so these packages need to be updated as well.
In gnumeric this bug could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user if the user was tricked into opening a specially crafted spreadsheet document.
In python, the impact depends on the particular application that uses python’s “re” (regular expression) module. In python server applications that process unchecked arbitrary regular expressions with the “re” module, this could potentially be exploited to remotely execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the server.
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.
Vulmon