postgresql-common vulnerabilities

9 November 2017

postgresql-common vulnerabilities

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

• Ubuntu 17.10
• Ubuntu 17.04
• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Summary

postgresql-common could be made to overwrite files as the administrator.

Software Description

• postgresql-common - PostgreSQL database-cluster manager

Details

Dawid Golunski discovered that the postgresql-common pg_ctlcluster script incorrectly handled symlinks. A local attacker could possibly use this issue to escalate privileges. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2016-1255)

It was discovered that the postgresql-common helper scripts incorrectly handled symlinks. A local attacker could possibly use this issue to escalate privileges. (CVE-2017-8806)

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 17.10

postgresql-common - 184ubuntu1.1

Ubuntu 17.04

postgresql-common - 179ubuntu0.1

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

postgresql-common - 173ubuntu0.1

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

postgresql-common - 154ubuntu1.1

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.

References

• CVE-2016-1255
• CVE-2017-8806