USN-3367-1: gdb vulnerabilities

26 July 2017

Several security issues were fixed in gdb.

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Releases

Packages

  • gdb - GNU Debugger

Details

Hanno Böck discovered that gdb incorrectly handled certain malformed AOUT
headers in PE executables. If a user or automated system were tricked into
processing a specially crafted binary, a remote attacker could use this
issue to cause gdb to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly
execute arbitrary code. This issue only applied to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
(CVE-2014-8501)

It was discovered that gdb incorrectly handled printing bad bytes in Intel
Hex objects. If a user or automated system were tricked into processing a
specially crafted binary, a remote attacker could use this issue to cause
gdb to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only applied to
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2014-9939)

It was discovered that gdb incorrectly handled certain string operations.
If a user or automated system were tricked into processing a specially
crafted binary, a remote attacker could use this issue to cause gdb to
crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary
code. This issue only applied to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
(CVE-2016-2226)

It was discovered that gdb incorrectly handled parsing certain binaries. If
a user or automated system were tricked into processing a specially crafted
binary, a remote attacker could use this issue to cause gdb to crash,
resulting in a denial of service. This issue only applied to Ubuntu 14.04
LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2016-4487, CVE-2016-4488, CVE-2016-4489,
CVE-2016-4490, CVE-2016-4492, CVE-2016-4493, CVE-2016-6131)

It was discovered that gdb incorrectly handled parsing certain binaries. If
a user or automated system were tricked into processing a specially crafted
binary, a remote attacker could use this issue to cause gdb to crash,
resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2016-4491)

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 17.04
Ubuntu 16.04
Ubuntu 14.04

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