USN-3010-1: Expat vulnerabilities

20 June 2016

Several security issues were fixed in Expat.

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Releases

Packages

  • expat - XML parsing C library

Details

It was discovered that Expat unexpectedly called srand in certain
circumstances. This could reduce the security of calling applications.
(CVE-2012-6702)

It was discovered that Expat incorrectly handled seeding the random number
generator. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause a
denial of service. (CVE-2016-5300)

Reduce your security exposure

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.

Learn more about Ubuntu Pro

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 16.04
Ubuntu 15.10
Ubuntu 14.04
Ubuntu 12.04

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

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