USN-4134-3: IBus vulnerability

Publication date

24 March 2020

Overview

IBus could allow local users to capture key strokes of other locally logged in users.


Packages

  • ibus - Intelligent Input Bus - core

Details

USN-4134-1 fixed a vulnerability in IBus. The update caused a regression in
some Qt applications and the fix was subsequently reverted in
USN-4134-2. The regression has since been resolved and so this update fixes
the original vulnerability.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Original advisory details:

Simon McVittie discovered that IBus did not enforce appropriate access
controls on its private D-Bus socket. A local unprivileged user who
discovers the IBus socket address of another user could exploit this to
capture the key strokes of the other user.

USN-4134-1 fixed a vulnerability in IBus. The update caused a regression in
some Qt applications and the fix was subsequently reverted in
USN-4134-2. The regression has since been resolved and so this update fixes
the original vulnerability.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Original advisory details:

Simon McVittie discovered that IBus did not enforce appropriate access
controls on its private D-Bus socket. A local unprivileged user who
discovers the IBus socket address of another user could exploit this to
capture the key strokes of the other user.

Update instructions

After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make all the necessary changes.

Learn more about how to get the fixes.

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

Ubuntu Release Package Version
19.10 eoan ibus –  1.5.21-1~exp2ubuntu2.1
18.04 bionic ibus –  1.5.17-3ubuntu5.3
16.04 xenial ibus –  1.5.11-1ubuntu2.4

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