USN-2536-1: libXfont vulnerabilities

18 March 2015

libXfont could be made to crash or run programs as an administrator if it opened a specially crafted bdf font file.

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Releases

Packages

  • libxfont - X11 font rasterisation library

Details

Ilja van Sprundel, Alan Coopersmith, and William Robinet discovered that
libXfont incorrectly handled malformed bdf fonts. A local attacker could
use this issue to cause libXfont to crash, or possibly execute arbitrary
code in order to gain privileges.

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.

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Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 14.10
Ubuntu 14.04
Ubuntu 12.04
Ubuntu 10.04

After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make
all the necessary changes.

References

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Further reading