Ubuntu Security Notice USN-695-1
17th December, 2008
shadow vulnerability
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
- Ubuntu 8.10
- Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
- Ubuntu 7.10
- Ubuntu 6.06 LTS
Software description
- shadow
Details
Paul Szabo discovered a race condition in login. While setting up
tty permissions, login did not correctly handle symlinks. If a local
attacker were able to gain control of the system utmp file, they could
cause login to change the ownership and permissions on arbitrary files,
leading to a root privilege escalation.
Update instructions
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package version:
- Ubuntu 8.10:
- login 1:4.1.1-1ubuntu1.2
- Ubuntu 8.04 LTS:
- login 1:4.0.18.2-1ubuntu2.2
- Ubuntu 7.10:
- login 1:4.0.18.1-9ubuntu0.2
- Ubuntu 6.06 LTS:
- login 1:4.0.13-7ubuntu3.4
To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.
In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the
necessary changes.