USN-234-1: cpio vulnerability

Releases

• Ubuntu 5.10
• Ubuntu 5.04
• Ubuntu 4.10

Details

Richard Harms discovered that cpio did not sufficiently validate file
properties when creating archives. Files with e. g. a very large size
caused a buffer overflow. By tricking a user or an automatic backup
system into putting a specially crafted file into a cpio archive, a
local attacker could probably exploit this to execute arbitrary code
with the privileges of the target user (which is likely root in an
automatic backup system).

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 5.10

• cpio -

Ubuntu 5.04

• cpio -

Ubuntu 4.10

• cpio -

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

References

• CVE-2005-4268