1. Ubuntu Security Notices
  2. USN-1363-1

USN-1363-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Publication date

13 February 2012

Overview

Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.

Releases

Packages

Details

A bug was discovered in the Linux kernel's calculation of OOM (Out of
memory) scores, that would result in the wrong process being killed. A user
could use this to kill the process with the highest OOM score, even if that
process belongs to another user or the system. (CVE-2011-4097)

A flaw was found in KVM's Programmable Interval Timer (PIT). When a virtual
interrupt control is not available a local user could use this to cause a
denial of service by starting a timer. (CVE-2011-4622)

A flaw was discovered in the XFS filesystem. If a local user mounts a
specially crafted XFS image it could potential execute arbitrary code on
the system. (CVE-2012-0038)

Andy Whitcroft discovered a that the Overlayfs filesystem was not doing the
extended permission checks needed by cgroups and Linux Security Modules
(LSMs). A...

A bug was discovered in the Linux kernel's calculation of OOM (Out of
memory) scores, that would result in the wrong process being killed. A user
could use this to kill the process with the highest OOM score, even if that
process belongs to another user or the system. (CVE-2011-4097)

A flaw was found in KVM's Programmable Interval Timer (PIT). When a virtual
interrupt control is not available a local user could use this to cause a
denial of service by starting a timer. (CVE-2011-4622)

A flaw was discovered in the XFS filesystem. If a local user mounts a
specially crafted XFS image it could potential execute arbitrary code on
the system. (CVE-2012-0038)

Andy Whitcroft discovered a that the Overlayfs filesystem was not doing the
extended permission checks needed by cgroups and Linux Security Modules
(LSMs). A local user could exploit this to by-pass security policy and
access files that should not be accessible. (CVE-2012-0055)

A flaw was found in the linux kernels IPv4 IGMP query processing. A remote
attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2012-0207)

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. If you use linux-restricted-modules, you have to update that package as well to get modules which work with the new kernel version. Unless you manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages (e.g. linux-generic, linux-server, 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
11.10 oneiric linux-image-3.0.0-16-server –  3.0.0-16.28
linux-image-3.0.0-16-powerpc-smp –  3.0.0-16.28
linux-image-3.0.0-16-virtual –  3.0.0-16.28
linux-image-3.0.0-16-powerpc64-smp –  3.0.0-16.28
linux-image-3.0.0-16-powerpc –  3.0.0-16.28
linux-image-3.0.0-16-generic-pae –  3.0.0-16.28
linux-image-3.0.0-16-omap –  3.0.0-16.28
linux-image-3.0.0-16-generic –  3.0.0-16.28

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References

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