Several security vulnerabilities have been addressed

Oct 22, 2019 21:14 GMT  ·  By

Canonical released today a new Linux kernel security update for the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS operating system series to address several security vulnerabilities.

Affecting both the Linux 4.15 kernel used in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) and Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS (Xenial Xerus) systems, the new security patch fixed an improperly implemented Spectre mitigation in the ptrace susbsystem (CVE-2019-15902), which could allow a local attacker to expose sensitive information.

It also addresses a buffer overread (CVE-2019-15918) discovered that the SMB networking file system implementation, which could allow an attacker to expose sensitive information (kernel memory), two flaws (CVE-2019-15117 and CVE-2019-15118) discovered in the USB audio driver that may allow a physically proximate attacker to crash the system, and a flaw (CVE-2019-14821) in the KVM hypervisor implementation that let a local attacker to crash the system.

Several vulnerabilities were also fixed in Linux kernel's RSI 91x Wi-Fi driver (CVE-2018-21008), allowing a physically proximate to crash the system or execute arbitrary code, the Marvell Wi-Fi device driver (CVE-2019-14814, CVE-2019-14815, CVE-2019-14816), allowing a local attacker to crash the system or execute arbitrary code, or the Technisat DVB-S/S2 USB device driver (CVE-2019-15505), allowing a physically proximate attacker to expose sensitive information or crash the system.

Issues affecting Ubuntu 16.04 LTS's Linux 4.4 kernel

Affecting the Linux 4.4 kernel used in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) systems, the new security update addresses many of the above issues, as well as two race conditions (CVE-2016-10906 and CVE-2017-18232) discovered in the ARC EMAC ethernet driver and the Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) implementation, both of which allowing a local attacker to cause a denial of service (system crash or kernel deadlock).

Canonical urges users of the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS systems running the Linux 4.15 kernel to update their installations to linux-image 4.15.0-66.75 (64-bit) and users of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS running the Linux 4.4 kernel to update to linux-image 4.4.0-166.195 (64-bit). To update your systems, please follow the instructions provided by Canonical at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades and reboot accordingly.