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USN-110-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

=========================================================== Ubuntu Security Notice USN-110-1 April 11, 2005 linux-source-2.6.8.1 vulnerabilities CAN-2005-0867, CAN-2005-0937 =========================================================== A security issue affects the following Ubuntu releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog) The following packages are affected: linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-386 linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-686 linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-686-smp linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-amd64-generic linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-amd64-k8 linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-amd64-k8-smp linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-amd64-xeon linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-k7 linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-k7-smp linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-power3 linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-power3-smp linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-power4 linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-power4-smp linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-powerpc linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-powerpc-smp linux-patch-debian-2.6.8.1 linux-source-2.6.8.1 The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected package to version 2.6.8.1-16.14. You need to reboot the computer after doing a standard system upgrade to effect the necessary changes. Details follow: Alexander Nyberg discovered an integer overflow in the sysfs_write_file() function. A local attacker could exploit this to crash the kernel or possibly even execute arbitrary code with root privileges by writing to an user-writable file in /sys under certain low-memory conditions. However, there are very few cases where a user-writeable sysfs file actually exists. (CAN-2005-0867) Olof Johansson discovered a Denial of Service vulnerability in the futex functions, which provide semaphores for exclusive locking of resources. A local attacker could possibly exploit this to cause a kernel deadlock. (CAN-2005-0937) In addition this update fixes two race conditions in the ext3 and jfs file system drivers, which could lead to a kernel crash under certain (unusual) conditions. However, these cannot easily be triggered by users, thus they are not security sensitive. (http://linux.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.5/gnupatch@4248d87aETPJX79hVXl4owAUwu2SmQ, http://linux.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.6/cset@1.2181.46.242)