USN-1527-1: Expat vulnerabilities

Ubuntu Security Notice USN-1527-1

9th August, 2012

expat vulnerabilities

A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:

  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 11.10
  • Ubuntu 11.04
  • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

Summary

Expat could be made to cause a denial of service by consuming excessive CPU and memory resources.

Software description

  • expat - XML parsing C library - example application

Details

It was discovered that Expat computed hash values without restricting the
ability to trigger hash collisions predictably. If a user or application linked
against Expat were tricked into opening a crafted XML file, an attacker could
cause a denial of service by consuming excessive CPU resources. (CVE-2012-0876)

Tim Boddy discovered that Expat did not properly handle memory reallocation
when processing XML files. If a user or application linked against Expat were
tricked into opening a crafted XML file, an attacker could cause a denial of
service by consuming excessive memory resources. This issue only affected
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, 10.04 LTS, 11.04 and 11.10. (CVE-2012-1148)

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:
lib64expat1 2.0.1-7.2ubuntu1.1
libexpat1-udeb 2.0.1-7.2ubuntu1.1
libexpat1 2.0.1-7.2ubuntu1.1
Ubuntu 11.10:
lib64expat1 2.0.1-7ubuntu3.11.10.1
libexpat1-udeb 2.0.1-7ubuntu3.11.10.1
libexpat1 2.0.1-7ubuntu3.11.10.1
Ubuntu 11.04:
lib64expat1 2.0.1-7ubuntu3.11.04.1
libexpat1-udeb 2.0.1-7ubuntu3.11.04.1
libexpat1 2.0.1-7ubuntu3.11.04.1
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS:
lib64expat1 2.0.1-7ubuntu1.1
libexpat1-udeb 2.0.1-7ubuntu1.1
libexpat1 2.0.1-7ubuntu1.1
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS:
lib64expat1 2.0.1-0ubuntu1.2
libexpat1-udeb 2.0.1-0ubuntu1.2
libexpat1 2.0.1-0ubuntu1.2

To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.

After a standard system upgrade you need to restart any applications linked
against Expat to effect the necessary changes.

References

CVE-2012-0876, CVE-2012-1148