USN-228-1: curl library vulnerability

Releases

• Ubuntu 5.10
• Ubuntu 5.04
• Ubuntu 4.10

Details

Stefan Esser discovered several buffer overflows in the handling of
URLs. By attempting to load an URL with a specially crafted invalid
hostname, a local attacker could exploit this to execute arbitrary
code with the privileges of the application that uses the cURL
library.

It is not possible to trick cURL into loading a malicious URL with an
HTTP redirect, so this vulnerability was usually not exploitable
remotely. However, it could be exploited locally to e. g. circumvent
PHP security restrictions.

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 5.10

• libcurl3 -
• libcurl2 -

Ubuntu 5.04

• libcurl3 -
• libcurl2 -

Ubuntu 4.10

• libcurl3 -
• libcurl2 -

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

References

• CVE-2005-4077