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)
An information leak in the Linux kernel was discovered that could leak the high 16 bits of the kernel stack address on 32-bit Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) paravirt guests. A user in the guest OS could exploit this leak to obtain information that could potentially be used to aid in attacking the kernel. (CVE-2014-8134)
A race condition with MMIO and PIO transactions in the KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) subsystem of the Linux kernel was discovered. A guest OS user could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service (guest OS crash) via a specially crafted application. (CVE-2014-7842)
The KVM (kernel virtual machine) subsystem of the Linux kernel miscalculates the number of memory pages during the handling of a mapping failure. A guest OS user could exploit this to cause a denial of service (host OS page unpinning) or possibly have unspecified other impact by leveraging guest OS privileges. (CVE-2014-8369)
Andy Lutomirski discovered that the Linux kernel does not properly handle faults associated with the Stack Segment (SS) register on the x86 architecture. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service (panic). (CVE-2014-9090)
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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