Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10 USN-1799-1: Severe NVIDIA Driver Privilege Issue

ubuntu

April 10, 2013

NVIDIA graphics drivers could be made to run programs as an administrator.

Summary

NVIDIA graphics drivers could be made to run programs as an administrator.

Software Description:

- nvidia-graphics-drivers: NVIDIA binary Xorg driver

- nvidia-graphics-drivers-updates: NVIDIA binary Xorg driver

- nvidia-settings: Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver

- nvidia-settings-updates: Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver

Details:

It was discovered that the NVIDIA graphics drivers incorrectly handled

large ARGB cursors. A local attacker could use this issue to gain root

privileges.

The NVIDIA graphics drivers have been updated to 304.88 to fix this issue.

In addition to the security fix, the updated packages contain bug fixes,

new features, and possibly incompatible changes.

Topics Covered

security advisory critical local attack ubuntu administrator access nvidia-graphics-drivers

Update Instructions

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

Ubuntu 12.10:
  nvidia-current                  304.88-0ubuntu0.1
  nvidia-current-updates          304.88-0ubuntu0.1
  nvidia-settings                 304.88-0ubuntu0.2
  nvidia-settings-updates         304.88-0ubuntu0.2

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:
  nvidia-current                  304.88-0ubuntu0.0.2
  nvidia-current-updates          304.88-0ubuntu0.0.1
  nvidia-settings                 304.88-0ubuntu0.0.2
  nvidia-settings-updates         304.88-0ubuntu0.0.2

After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make all
the necessary changes.