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New Linux Kernel Vulnerability Patched in All Supported Ubuntu Systems, Update Now

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Linux
News
Security
Ubuntu

Discovered by William Liu and Jamie Hill-Daniel, the new security flaw (CVE-2022-0185) is an integer underflow vulnerability found in Linux kernel’s file system context functionality, which could allow an attacker to crash the system or run programs as an administrator.

The security vulnerability affects all supported Ubuntu releases, including Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) systems running Linux kernel 5.13, Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo) systems running Linux kernel 5.11, as well as Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) systems running Linux kernel 5.4 LTS.

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'Now' would be the right time to patch Ubuntu...

  • 'Now' would be the right time to patch Ubuntu container hosts and ditch 21.04 thanks to heap buffer overflow bug

    The CVE-2022-0185 vulnerability in Ubuntu is severe enough that Red Hat is also advising immediate patching.

    The flaw allows a process inside a Linux user namespace to escape, which means it potentially affects any machine running containers.

    If you're not running any containers, you can just disable the user-namespace functionality – both companies' vulnerability descriptions describe how to do that on their respective distros. It affects RHEL (and derivatives) as well as Ubuntu 20.04, 21.04 and 21.10 – and presumably other distros, too.

    So it's possibly a good thing that "Hirsute Hippo", as Ubuntu 21.04 is nicknamed, just went end of life today (20 January 2022). If you have any 21.04 machines, it's time to upgrade them now. That means 21.10 "Impish Indri" for the moment, until the next LTS release appears in April.

Ubuntu patch with extra fear-mongering

  • Nasty Linux kernel bug found and fixed | ZDNet

    In this one, there's a heap overflow bug in the legacy_parse_param in the Linux kernel's fs/fs_context.c program. This parameter is used in Linux filesystems during superblock creation for mount and superblock reconfiguration for a remount. The superblock records all of a filesystem's characteristics such as file size, block size, empty and filled storage blocks. So, yeah, it's important.

    The legacy_parse_param() "PAGE_SIZE - 2 - size" calculation was mistakenly made an unsigned type. This means a large value of "size" results in a high positive value instead of a negative value as expected. Whoops.

    This, in turn, meant you copy data beyond the memory slab allocated for it. And, as all programmers know, writing beyond the memory your program is supposed to have access to is a terrible thing.

  • Ubuntu has a pretty serious security flaw, so patch now | TechRadar

    Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a major flaw in one of Linux’s most popular distros - Ubuntu, and are urging all users to patch immediately.

    As reported on Ubuntu’s website, two researchers - William Luil and Jamila Hill-Daniel - discovered a vulnerability that allows malicious actors to crash the system, or run software in administrator mode.

    The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-0185, allegedly affects all of the Ubuntu releases that are still being supported. That includes Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri with Linux kernel 5.13, Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo with Linux kernel 5.11, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa, and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver, both with Linux kernel 5.4 LTS.

Red Hat, Ubuntu issue warnings over Linux kernel vulnerability

  • Red Hat, Ubuntu issue warnings over Linux kernel vulnerability

    Red Hat and Ubuntu have issued warnings about a serious vulnerability in their Linux distributions.

    It’s described as a heap-based buffer overflow flaw (CVE 2022-0185). According to Ubuntu, the file system context functionality in the Linux kernel contained an integer underflow vulnerability, leading to an out-of-bounds write. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash) or execute arbitrary code.

    As The Register notes, the discovery also comes as Ubuntu 21.04 reached end of life, so rather than apply Ubutu’s mitigation to servers running this version, Linux admins should upgrade them to version 21.10, and apply a patch to it.

Looking At The New "Critical" Security Firmware Update

  • Looking At The New "Critical" Security Firmware Update Hitting Systems - Delivers New Intel Microcode - Phoronix

    Earlier this week the Linux Vendor Firmware Service began surging with activity following many new system firmware files being uploaded for what appears to be a "high severity upcoming security issue" but currently undisclosed. That issue hasn't been made public yet, but after poking around it is updating the Intel CPU microcode.

    After that earlier article, Red Hat's Richard Hughes who is the lead LVFS/fwupd lead developer commented that they shipped more than 156,000 firmware updates to end-users in a single day. The day after they were still at around twice their usual volume. For hardware with LVFS support for firmware updates, it's been a busy week but that only covers a small portion of the hardware out there.

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