Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
It was discovered that a use-after-free vulnerability existed in the AF_UNIX implementation in the Linux kernel. A local attacker could use crafted epoll_ctl calls to cause a denial of service (system crash) or expose sensitive information. (CVE-2013-7446)
2 February 2016
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
It was discovered that a use-after-free vulnerability existed in the AF_UNIX implementation in the Linux kernel. A local attacker could use crafted epoll_ctl calls to cause a denial of service (system crash) or expose sensitive information. (CVE-2013-7446)
It was discovered that the KVM implementation in the Linux kernel did not properly restore the values of the Programmable Interrupt Timer (PIT). A user-assisted attacker in a KVM guest could cause a denial of service in the host (system crash). (CVE-2015-7513)
Sasha Levin discovered that the Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) implementation in the Linux kernel had a race condition when checking whether a socket was bound or not. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash). (CVE-2015-7990)
It was discovered that the Btrfs implementation in the Linux kernel incorrectly handled compressed inline extants on truncation. A local attacker could use this to expose sensitive information. (CVE-2015-8374)
It was discovered that the netfilter Network Address Translation (NAT) implementation did not ensure that data structures were initialized when handling IPv4 addresses. An attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash). (CVE-2015-8787)
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. Unless you manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages (e.g. linux-generic, linux-generic-lts-RELEASE, linux-virtual, linux-powerpc), a standard system upgrade will automatically perform this as well.