USN-182-1: X server vulnerability

Publication date

12 September 2005

Overview

X server vulnerability

Releases


Details

A local privilege escalation vulnerability has been discovered in the
pixmap allocation handling of the X server. By allocating a huge
pixmap, a local user could trigger an integer overflow that resulted
in a memory allocation that was too small for the requested pixmap.
This resulted in a buffer overflow which could eventually be exploited
to execute arbitrary code with full root privileges.

A local privilege escalation vulnerability has been discovered in the
pixmap allocation handling of the X server. By allocating a huge
pixmap, a local user could trigger an integer overflow that resulted
in a memory allocation that was too small for the requested pixmap.
This resulted in a buffer overflow which could eventually be exploited
to execute arbitrary code with full root privileges.

Update instructions

In general, a standard system update will 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
5.04 hoary xserver-xorg – 
xserver-xfree86 – 
4.10 warty xserver-xorg – 
xserver-xfree86 – 

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.


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