Exploit Which Gave Admin Rights Gets Fixed in Ubuntu 12.10

A security vulnerability that was discovered in the Linux kernel affecting the Ubuntu 12.10 LTS (Quantal Quetzal) operating system, was announced by Canonical.

This is the kernel vulnerability found in the Linux kernel package CVE-2013-0871. According to Canonical, the system could be made to run programs as an administrator.

A race condition has been discovered in the Linux kernel's ptrace syscall. An unprivileged local attacker could exploit this flaw to run programs as an administrator.

The security flaws can be fixed if you upgrade your system(s) to the linux-image-3.5.0-25 (3.5.0-25).

Don't forget to reboot your computer after the upgrade!

ATTENTION: Due to an unavoidable ABI change, the kernel packages have a new version number, which will force you to reinstall and recompile all third-party kernel modules you might have installed. Moreover, if you use the linux-restricted-modules package, you have to update it as well to get modules that work with the new Linux kernel version.