The system could be made to expose sensitive information.
Andrei Vlad Lutas and Dan Lutas discovered that some x86 processors incorrectly handle SWAPGS instructions during speculative execution. A local attacker could use this to expose sensitive information (kernel memory).
13 August 2019
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
The system could be made to expose sensitive information.
Andrei Vlad Lutas and Dan Lutas discovered that some x86 processors incorrectly handle SWAPGS instructions during speculative execution. A local attacker could use this to expose sensitive information (kernel memory).
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.
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