USN-1592-1: Python 2.7 vulnerabilities

2 October 2012

Several security issues were fixed in Python 2.7.

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Releases

Packages

  • python2.7 - An interactive high-level object-oriented language (version 2.7)

Details

Niels Heinen discovered that the urllib and urllib2 modules would process
Location headers that specify a redirection to file: URLs. A remote
attacker could exploit this to obtain sensitive information or cause a
denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 11.04. (CVE-2011-1521)

It was discovered that SimpleHTTPServer did not use a charset parameter in
the Content-Type HTTP header. An attacker could potentially exploit this
to conduct cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks against Internet Explorer 7
users. This issue only affected Ubuntu 11.04. (CVE-2011-4940)

It was discovered that Python distutils contained a race condition when
creating the ~/.pypirc file. A local attacker could exploit this to obtain
sensitive information. (CVE-2011-4944)

It was discovered that SimpleXMLRPCServer did not properly validate its
input when handling HTTP POST requests. A remote attacker could exploit
this to cause a denial of service via excessive CPU utilization.
(CVE-2012-0845)

It was discovered that Python was susceptible to hash algorithm attacks.
An attacker could cause a denial of service under certian circumstances.
This update adds the '-R' command line option and honors setting the
PYTHONHASHSEED environment variable to 'random' to salt str and datetime
objects with an unpredictable value. (CVE-2012-1150)

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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 11.10
Ubuntu 11.04

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