Tavis Ormandy and Julien Tinnes discovered that Linux did not correctly initialize certain socket operation function pointers. A local attacker could exploit this to gain root privileges. By default, Ubuntu 8.04 and later with a non-zero /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr setting were not vulnerable.
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
19 August 2009
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
Tavis Ormandy and Julien Tinnes discovered that Linux did not correctly initialize certain socket operation function pointers. A local attacker could exploit this to gain root privileges. By default, Ubuntu 8.04 and later with a non-zero /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr setting were not vulnerable.
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 reboot your computer to effect the necessary changes.
Vulmon