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USN-1065-1: shadow vulnerability

15 February 2011

Newline injection possible into /etc/passwd

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Releases

Packages

Details

Kees Cook discovered that some shadow utilities did not correctly validate
user input. A local attacker could exploit this flaw to inject newlines into
the /etc/passwd file. If the system was configured to use NIS, this could
lead to existing NIS groups or users gaining or losing access to the system,
resulting in a denial of service or unauthorized access.

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 9.10
Ubuntu 10.10
Ubuntu 10.04

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

References