Ubuntu Patches Several Security Flaws

[Aerosol]

Ubuntu has released a number of patches for security vulnerabilities in several versions of the OS, including some remote code execution flaws in Thunderbird, which is included with Ubuntu.

Thunderbird is Mozilla’s email client, and the company recently fixed several memory corruption vulnerabilities, along with a cross-site request forgery bug and a flaw that could lead to a session-fixation attack.

“If a user were tricked in to opening a specially crafted message with scripting enabled, an attacker could potentially exploit these to cause a denial of service via application crash, or execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking Thunderbird,” the Ubuntu advisory says, referring to the memory corruption vulnerabilities.

The CSRF weakness in Thunderbird could be exploited if an attacker can get a user to open a malicious message while scripting is enabled. The session-fixation attack could occur under some circumstances if a user is connected to a malicious web proxy.

In addition to the Thunderbird vulnerabilities, there are also patches for several other flaws in Ubuntu. One of the patches fixes a bug in libssh that could cause a denial of service.

“It was discovered that libssh incorrectly handled certain kexinit packets. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause libssh to crash, resulting in a denial of service,” the advisory says.

There are also two vulnerabilities in the RPM package that could let a local attacker execute arbitrary code and a bug in libevent that could allow code execution in some cases.

“Andrew Bartlett discovered that libevent incorrectly handled large inputs to the evbuffer API. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue with an application that uses libevent to cause a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code,” the Ubuntu advisory says.

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