USN-2462-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

13 January 2015

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.

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Details

Andy Lutomirski discovered that the Linux kernel does not properly handle
faults associated with the Stack Segment (SS) register in the x86
architecture. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to gain
administrative privileges. (CVE-2014-9322)

Lars Bull reported a race condition in the PIT (programmable interrupt
timer) emulation in the KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) subsystem of the Linux
kernel. A local guest user with access to PIT i/o ports could exploit this
flaw to cause a denial of service (crash) on the host. (CVE-2014-3611)

Lars Bull and Nadav Amit reported a flaw in how KVM (the Kernel Virtual
Machine) handles noncanonical writes to certain MSR registers. A privileged
guest user can exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service (kernel
panic) on the host. (CVE-2014-3610)

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Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 10.04

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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