1. Ubuntu Security Notices
  2. USN-2872-2

USN-2872-2: Linux kernel (Wily HWE) vulnerability

Publication date

19 January 2016

Overview

The system could be made to crash or run programs as an administrator.

Releases

Packages

Details

Yevgeny Pats discovered that the session keyring implementation in the
Linux kernel did not properly reference count when joining an existing
session keyring. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of
service (system crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code with
administrative privileges.

Yevgeny Pats discovered that the session keyring implementation in the
Linux kernel did not properly reference count when joining an existing
session keyring. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of
service (system crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code with
administrative privileges.

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.

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.

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

Ubuntu Release Package Version
14.04 trusty linux-image-4.2.0-25-generic –  4.2.0-25.30~14.04.1
linux-image-4.2.0-25-generic-lpae –  4.2.0-25.30~14.04.1
linux-image-4.2.0-25-lowlatency –  4.2.0-25.30~14.04.1
linux-image-4.2.0-25-powerpc-e500mc –  4.2.0-25.30~14.04.1
linux-image-4.2.0-25-powerpc-smp –  4.2.0-25.30~14.04.1
linux-image-4.2.0-25-powerpc64-emb –  4.2.0-25.30~14.04.1
linux-image-4.2.0-25-powerpc64-smp –  4.2.0-25.30~14.04.1

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References

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