USN-3197-1: libgc vulnerability

15 February 2017

Applications using libgc could be made to crash or run programs as your login.

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Releases

Packages

  • libgc - Boehm-Demers-Weiser garbage collecting storage allocator library

Details

Kuang-che Wu discovered that multiple integer overflow vulnerabilities
existed in libgc. An attacker could use these to cause a denial of
service (application crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code.

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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 16.10
Ubuntu 16.04
Ubuntu 14.04
Ubuntu 12.04

After a standard system update you need to restart applications using
libgc to make all the necessary changes.

References

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Further reading