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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS USN-2873-1 Critical: Kernel Denial of Service

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Calendar Grey January 19, 2016
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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS encounters a significant vulnerability that may lead to system failures or the unauthorized execution of software with administrative privileges.
The system could be made to crash or run programs as an administrator.

Summary

The system could be made to crash or run programs as an administrator.

Software Description:

- linux-lts-utopic: Linux hardware enablement kernel from Utopic

Details:

Yevgeny Pats discovered that the session keyring implementation in the

Linux kernel did not properly reference count when joining an existing

session keyring. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of

service (system crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code with

administrative privileges.

Update Instructions

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

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:
  linux-image-3.16.0-59-generic   3.16.0-59.79~14.04.1
  linux-image-3.16.0-59-generic-lpae  3.16.0-59.79~14.04.1
  linux-image-3.16.0-59-lowlatency  3.16.0-59.79~14.04.1
  linux-image-3.16.0-59-powerpc-e500mc  3.16.0-59.79~14.04.1
  linux-image-3.16.0-59-powerpc-smp  3.16.0-59.79~14.04.1
  linux-image-3.16.0-59-powerpc64-emb  3.16.0-59.79~14.04.1
  linux-image-3.16.0-59-powerpc64-smp  3.16.0-59.79~14.04.1

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.

References

https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-2873-1

CVE-2016-0728

Severity
critical
Lowest
Low
Medium
High
Critical

January 19, 2016

Package Information

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