USN-3527-1: Irssi vulnerabilities

10 January 2018

Several security issues were fixed in Irssi.

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Releases

Packages

  • irssi - terminal based IRC client

Details

Joseph Bisch discovered that Irssi incorrectly handled incomplete escape
codes. If a user were tricked into using malformed commands or opening
malformed files, an attacker could use this issue to cause Irssi to crash,
resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2018-5205)

Joseph Bisch discovered that Irssi incorrectly handled settings the channel
topic without specifying a sender. A malicious IRC server could use this
issue to cause Irssi to crash, resulting in a denial of service.
(CVE-2018-5206)

Joseph Bisch discovered that Irssi incorrectly handled incomplete variable
arguments. If a user were tricked into using malformed commands or opening
malformed files, an attacker could use this issue to cause Irssi to crash,
resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2018-5207)

Joseph Bisch discovered that Irssi incorrectly handled completing certain
strings. An attacker could use this issue to cause Irssi to crash,
resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code.
(CVE-2018-5208)

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 17.10
Ubuntu 17.04
Ubuntu 16.04
Ubuntu 14.04

After a standard system update you need to restart Irssi to make all the
necessary changes.