USN-1272-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

21 November 2011

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.

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Packages

Details

It was discovered that CIFS incorrectly handled authentication. When a user
had a CIFS share mounted that required authentication, a local user could
mount the same share without knowing the correct password. (CVE-2011-1585)

Andrea Righi discovered a race condition in the KSM memory merging support.
If KSM was being used, a local attacker could exploit this to crash the
system, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2011-2183)

Vasily Averin discovered that the NFS Lock Manager (NLM) incorrectly
handled unlock requests. A local attacker could exploit this to cause a
denial of service. (CVE-2011-2491)

Robert Swiecki discovered that mapping extensions were incorrectly handled.
A local attacker could exploit this to crash the system, leading to a
denial of service. (CVE-2011-2496)

It was discovered that the wireless stack incorrectly verified SSID
lengths. A local attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service
or gain root privileges. (CVE-2011-2517)

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Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 10.10

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. If
you use linux-restricted-modules, you have to update that package as
well to get modules which work with the new kernel version. Unless you
manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages (e.g. linux-generic,
linux-server, linux-powerpc), a standard system upgrade will automatically
perform this as well.

References

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