USN-5122-2: Apport vulnerability

26 October 2021

Apport could be made to create files as the administrator.

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Releases

Packages

  • apport - automatically generate crash reports for debugging

Details

USN-5122-1 fixed a vulnerability in Apport. This update provides
the corresponding update for Ubuntu 14.04 ESM and Ubuntu 16.04 ESM.

Original advisory details:

It was discovered that Apport could be tricked into writing core files as
root into arbitrary directories in certain scenarios. A local attacker
could possibly use this issue to escalate privileges. On Ubuntu 16.04 ESM
This update will cause Apport to generate all core files in the /var/lib/apport/coredump
directory. On Ubuntu 14.04 ESM, core file generation has been disabled by default.

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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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Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 16.04
Ubuntu 14.04

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

References

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