USN-3139-1: Vim vulnerability
29 November 2016
vim vulnerability
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
- Ubuntu 16.10
- Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
- Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Summary
Vim could be made to run programs as your login if it opened a specially crafted file.
Software Description
- vim - Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor
Details
Florian Larysch discovered that the Vim text editor did not properly validate values for the ‘filetype’, ‘syntax’, and ‘keymap’ options. An attacker could trick a user into opening a file with specially crafted modelines and possibly execute arbitrary code with the user’s privileges.
Update instructions
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
- Ubuntu 16.10
- vim - 2:7.4.1829-1ubuntu2.1
- vim-common - 2:7.4.1829-1ubuntu2.1
- vim-gui-common - 2:7.4.1829-1ubuntu2.1
- vim-runtime - 2:7.4.1829-1ubuntu2.1
- Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
- vim - 2:7.4.1689-3ubuntu1.2
- vim-common - 2:7.4.1689-3ubuntu1.2
- vim-gui-common - 2:7.4.1689-3ubuntu1.2
- vim-runtime - 2:7.4.1689-3ubuntu1.2
- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
- vim - 2:7.4.052-1ubuntu3.1
- vim-common - 2:7.4.052-1ubuntu3.1
- vim-gui-common - 2:7.4.052-1ubuntu3.1
- vim-runtime - 2:7.4.052-1ubuntu3.1
- Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
- vim - 2:7.3.429-2ubuntu2.2
- vim-common - 2:7.3.429-2ubuntu2.2
- vim-gui-common - 2:7.3.429-2ubuntu2.2
- vim-runtime - 2:7.3.429-2ubuntu2.2
To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.
After a standard system update you need to restart Vim to make all the necessary changes.