Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Andy Lutomirski discovered that the Linux kernel does not properly handle faults associated with the Stack Segment (SS) register in the x86 architecture. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to gain administrative privileges. (CVE-2014-9322)
13 January 2015
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Andy Lutomirski discovered that the Linux kernel does not properly handle faults associated with the Stack Segment (SS) register in the x86 architecture. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to gain administrative privileges. (CVE-2014-9322)
Lars Bull reported a race condition in the PIT (programmable interrupt timer) emulation in the KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) subsystem of the Linux kernel. A local guest user with access to PIT i/o ports could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service (crash) on the host. (CVE-2014-3611)
Lars Bull and Nadav Amit reported a flaw in how KVM (the Kernel Virtual Machine) handles noncanonical writes to certain MSR registers. A privileged guest user can exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service (kernel panic) on the host. (CVE-2014-3610)
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.
ATTENTION: Due to an unavoidable ABI change 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.
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