USN-2840-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities
17 December 2015
Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.
Releases
Packages
- linux - Linux kernel
Details
Dmitry Vyukov discovered that the Linux kernel's keyring handler attempted
to garbage collect incompletely instantiated keys. A local unprivileged
attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash).
(CVE-2015-7872)
Jan Beulich discovered that the KVM svm hypervisor implementation in the
Linux kernel did not properly catch Debug exceptions on AMD processors. An
attacker in a guest virtual machine could use this to cause a denial of
service (system crash) in the host OS. (CVE-2015-8104)
Update instructions
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
Ubuntu 12.04
-
linux-image-3.2.0-96-generic
-
3.2.0-96.136
-
linux-image-3.2.0-96-powerpc-smp
-
3.2.0-96.136
-
linux-image-3.2.0-96-virtual
-
3.2.0-96.136
-
linux-image-3.2.0-96-highbank
-
3.2.0-96.136
-
linux-image-3.2.0-96-omap
-
3.2.0-96.136
-
linux-image-3.2.0-96-generic-pae
-
3.2.0-96.136
-
linux-image-3.2.0-96-powerpc64-smp
-
3.2.0-96.136
After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make
all the necessary changes.
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.