The system could be made to crash or run programs as an administrator.
Alexander Popov discovered that the N_HDLC line discipline implementation in the Linux kernel contained a double-free vulnerability. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash) or possibly gain administrative privileges.
7 March 2017
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
The system could be made to crash or run programs as an administrator.
Alexander Popov discovered that the N_HDLC line discipline implementation in the Linux kernel contained a double-free vulnerability. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash) or possibly gain administrative privileges.
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.
Vulmon