USN-4007-1: Linux kernel vulnerability

4 June 2019

A system hardening measure could be bypassed.

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Details

Federico Manuel Bento discovered that the Linux kernel did not properly
apply Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) in some situations for
setuid a.out binaries. A local attacker could use this to improve the
chances of exploiting an existing vulnerability in a setuid a.out binary.

As a hardening measure, this update disables a.out support.

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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 18.04

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.
Unless you manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages
(e.g. linux-generic, linux-generic-lts-RELEASE, linux-virtual,
linux-powerpc), a standard system upgrade will automatically perform
this as well.

References

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