USN-1107-1: x11-xserver-utils vulnerability

6 April 2011

An attacker could send crafted input to xrdb and cause it to run programs as root.

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Releases

Packages

Details

Sebastian Krahmer discovered that the xrdb utility incorrectly filtered
crafted hostnames. An attacker could use this flaw with a malicious
DHCP server or with a remote xdmcp login and execute arbitrary code,
resulting in root privilege escalation.

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Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.

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Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 9.10
Ubuntu 8.04
Ubuntu 10.10
Ubuntu 10.04

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

References

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Further reading