USN-1699-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

18 January 2013

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.

Reduce your security exposure

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.

Learn more about Ubuntu Pro

Releases

Packages

Details

Jon Howell reported a flaw in the Linux kernel's KVM (Kernel-based virtual
machine) subsystem's handling of the XSAVE feature. On hosts, using qemu
userspace, without the XSAVE feature an unprivileged local attacker could
exploit this flaw to crash the system. (CVE-2012-4461)

A flaw was discovered in the Linux kernel's handling of script execution
when module loading is enabled. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to
cause a leak of kernel stack contents. (CVE-2012-4530)

Florian Weimer discovered that hypervkvpd, which is distributed in the
Linux kernel, was not correctly validating source addresses of netlink
packets. An untrusted local user can cause a denial of service by causing
hypervkvpd to exit. (CVE-2012-5532)

Reduce your security exposure

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.

Learn more about Ubuntu Pro

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 12.10

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.