USN-2943-1: PCRE vulnerabilities

Publication date

29 March 2016

Overview

PCRE could be made to crash or run programs if it processed a specially-crafted regular expression.


Packages

  • pcre3 - Perl 5 Compatible Regular Expression Library

Details

It was discovered that PCRE incorrectly handled certain regular
expressions. A remote attacker could use this issue to cause applications
using PCRE to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute
arbitrary code.

It was discovered that PCRE incorrectly handled certain regular
expressions. A remote attacker could use this issue to cause applications
using PCRE to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute
arbitrary code.

Update instructions

After a standard system update you need to restart applications using PCRE, such as the Apache HTTP server and Nginx, 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
15.10 wily libpcre3 –  2:8.35-7.1ubuntu1.3
14.04 trusty libpcre3 –  1:8.31-2ubuntu2.2
12.04 precise libpcre3 –  8.12-4ubuntu0.2

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