USN-4579-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

14 October 2020

Several security issues were fixed in the Linux kernel.

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

Releases

Packages

Details

Hadar Manor discovered that the DCCP protocol implementation in the Linux
kernel improperly handled socket reuse, leading to a use-after-free
vulnerability. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service
(system crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2020-16119)

Wen Xu discovered that the XFS file system in the Linux kernel did not
properly validate inode metadata in some situations. An attacker could use
this to construct a malicious XFS image that, when mounted, could cause a
denial of service (system crash). (CVE-2018-10322)

Jay Shin discovered that the ext4 file system implementation in the Linux
kernel did not properly handle directory access with broken indexing,
leading to an out-of-bounds read vulnerability. A local attacker could use
this to cause a denial of service (system crash). (CVE-2020-14314)

It was discovered that a race condition existed in the hugetlb sysctl
implementation in the Linux kernel. A privileged attacker could use this to
cause a denial of service (system crash). (CVE-2020-25285)

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 16.04
Ubuntu 14.04

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.
Unless you manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages
(e.g. linux-generic, linux-generic-lts-RELEASE, linux-virtual,
linux-powerpc), a standard system upgrade will automatically perform
this as well.

References

Related notices

Join the discussion

Need help with your security needs?

Ubuntu Pro provides up to ten-year security coverage for over 23,000 open-source packages within the Ubuntu Main and Universe repositories.

Talk to an expert to find out what would work best for you

Further reading