linux vulnerability

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2015-1420  

The system could be made to expose sensitive information over the local applications.

A race condition was discovered in the Linux kernel’s file_handle size verification. A local user could exploit this flaw to read potentially sensative memory locations.

7 July 2015

linux vulnerability

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

  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Summary

The system could be made to expose sensitive information over the local applications.

Software Description

  • linux - Linux kernel

Details

A race condition was discovered in the Linux kernel’s file_handle size verification. A local user could exploit this flaw to read potentially sensative memory locations.

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
linux-image-3.2.0-87-generic - 3.2.0-87.125
linux-image-3.2.0-87-generic-pae - 3.2.0-87.125
linux-image-3.2.0-87-highbank - 3.2.0-87.125
linux-image-3.2.0-87-omap - 3.2.0-87.125
linux-image-3.2.0-87-powerpc-smp - 3.2.0-87.125
linux-image-3.2.0-87-powerpc64-smp - 3.2.0-87.125
linux-image-3.2.0-87-virtual - 3.2.0-87.125

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.

References