It was discovered that the DHCP client as included in dhcp3 did not verify the length of certain option fields when processing a response from an IPv4 dhcp server. If a user running Ubuntu 6.06 LTS or 8.04 LTS connected to a malicious dhcp server, a remote attacker could cause a denial of service or execute arbitrary code as the user invoking the program, typically the ‘dhcp’ user. For users running Ubuntu 8.10 or 9.04, a remote attacker should only be able to cause a denial of service in the DHCP client. In Ubuntu 9.04, attackers would also be isolated by the AppArmor dhclient3 profile.
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
14 July 2009
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
It was discovered that the DHCP client as included in dhcp3 did not verify the length of certain option fields when processing a response from an IPv4 dhcp server. If a user running Ubuntu 6.06 LTS or 8.04 LTS connected to a malicious dhcp server, a remote attacker could cause a denial of service or execute arbitrary code as the user invoking the program, typically the ‘dhcp’ user. For users running Ubuntu 8.10 or 9.04, a remote attacker should only be able to cause a denial of service in the DHCP client. In Ubuntu 9.04, attackers would also be isolated by the AppArmor dhclient3 profile.
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 upgrade you need to restart any DHCP network connections utilizing dhclient3 to effect the necessary changes.
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