linux vulnerability

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2016-8655  

The system could be made to crash or run programs as an administrator.

Philip Pettersson discovered a race condition in the af_packet implementation in the Linux kernel. A local unprivileged attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash) or run arbitrary code with administrative privileges.

5 December 2016

linux vulnerability

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

  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Summary

The system could be made to crash or run programs as an administrator.

Software Description

  • linux - Linux kernel

Details

Philip Pettersson discovered a race condition in the af_packet implementation in the Linux kernel. A local unprivileged attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash) or run arbitrary code with administrative privileges.

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
linux-image-3.2.0-118-generic - 3.2.0-118.161
linux-image-3.2.0-118-generic-pae - 3.2.0-118.161
linux-image-3.2.0-118-highbank - 3.2.0-118.161
linux-image-3.2.0-118-omap - 3.2.0-118.161
linux-image-3.2.0-118-powerpc-smp - 3.2.0-118.161
linux-image-3.2.0-118-powerpc64-smp - 3.2.0-118.161
linux-image-3.2.0-118-virtual - 3.2.0-118.161
linux-image-generic - 3.2.0.118.133
linux-image-generic-pae - 3.2.0.118.133
linux-image-highbank - 3.2.0.118.133
linux-image-omap - 3.2.0.118.133
linux-image-powerpc-smp - 3.2.0.118.133
linux-image-powerpc64-smp - 3.2.0.118.133
linux-image-virtual - 3.2.0.118.133

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.

References