Ubuntu 11.10: 1284-1 Critical Update Manager File Overwrite Risk

ubuntu

November 28, 2011

Update Manager could be made to overwrite files as the administrator.

Summary

Update Manager could be made to overwrite files as the administrator.

Software Description:

- update-manager: GNOME application that manages apt updates

- update-notifier: Daemon which notifies about package updates

Details:

David Black discovered that Update Manager incorrectly extracted the

downloaded upgrade tarball before verifying its GPG signature. If a remote

attacker were able to perform a man-in-the-middle attack, this flaw could

potentially be used to replace arbitrary files. (CVE-2011-3152)

David Black discovered that Update Manager created a temporary directory

in an insecure fashion. A local attacker could possibly use this flaw to

read the XAUTHORITY file of the user performing the upgrade.

(CVE-2011-3154)

This update also adds a hotfix to Update Notifier to handle cases where the

upgrade is being performed from CD media.

Topics Covered

security advisory file overwrite critical update local attack ubuntu update-manager

Update Instructions

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

Ubuntu 11.10:
  update-manager                  1:0.152.25.5

Ubuntu 11.04:
  update-manager                  1:0.150.5.1
  update-notifier                 0.111ubuntu2.1

Ubuntu 10.10:
  update-manager                  1:0.142.23.1
  update-notifier                 0.105ubuntu1.1

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS:
  auto-upgrade-tester             1:0.134.11.1
  update-notifier                 0.99.3ubuntu0.1

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS:
  update-manager                  1:0.87.31.1

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.