USN-4204-1: psutil vulnerability

28 November 2019

psutil could be made to crash or run programs.

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Releases

Packages

  • python-psutil - module providing convenience functions for managing processes

Details

Riccardo Schirone discovered that psutil incorrectly handled certain
reference counting operations. An attacker could use this issue to cause
psutil to crash, resulting in a denial of service, 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 19.10
Ubuntu 19.04
Ubuntu 18.04
Ubuntu 16.04

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

References

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Further reading