Several security issues were fixed in GNU patch.
Jakub Wilk discovered that GNU patch did not correctly handle file paths in patch files. An attacker could specially craft a patch file that could overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user invoking the program. This issue only affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. (CVE-2010-4651)
22 June 2015
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
Several security issues were fixed in GNU patch.
Jakub Wilk discovered that GNU patch did not correctly handle file paths in patch files. An attacker could specially craft a patch file that could overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user invoking the program. This issue only affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. (CVE-2010-4651)
László Böszörményi discovered that GNU patch did not correctly handle some patch files. An attacker could specially craft a patch file that could cause a denial of service. (CVE-2014-9637)
Jakub Wilk discovered that GNU patch did not correctly handle symbolic links in git style patch files. An attacker could specially craft a patch file that could overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user invoking the program. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.10. (CVE-2015-1196)
Jakub Wilk discovered that GNU patch did not correctly handle file renames in git style patch files. An attacker could specially craft a patch file that could overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user invoking the program. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.10. (CVE-2015-1395)
Jakub Wilk discovered the fix for CVE-2015-1196 was incomplete for GNU patch. An attacker could specially craft a patch file that could overwrite arbitrary files with the privileges of the user invoking the program. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.10. (CVE-2015-1396)
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.
In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.
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