USN-2188-1: elfutils vulnerability

30 April 2014

elfutils could be made to crash or run programs if it processed a specially crafted file.

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Releases

Packages

  • elfutils - collection of utilities to handle ELF objects

Details

Florian Weimer discovered that the elfutils libdw library incorrectly
handled malformed compressed debug sections in ELF files. If a user or
automated system were tricked into processing a specially crafted ELF file,
applications linked against libdw could be made to crash, or possibly
execute arbitrary code.

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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 14.04
Ubuntu 13.10
Ubuntu 12.10

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

References

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Further reading