USN-4977-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

3 June 2021

Several security issues were fixed in the Linux kernel.

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Releases

Packages

  • linux - Linux kernel
  • linux-aws - Linux kernel for Amazon Web Services (AWS) systems
  • linux-azure - Linux kernel for Microsoft Azure Cloud systems
  • linux-gcp - Linux kernel for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) systems
  • linux-kvm - Linux kernel for cloud environments
  • linux-oracle - Linux kernel for Oracle Cloud systems
  • linux-raspi - Linux kernel for Raspberry Pi (V8) systems

Details

Kiyin (尹亮) discovered that the NFC LLCP protocol implementation in the
Linux kernel contained a reference counting error. A local attacker could
use this to cause a denial of service (system crash). (CVE-2020-25670)

Kiyin (尹亮) discovered that the NFC LLCP protocol implementation in the
Linux kernel did not properly deallocate memory in certain error
situations. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service
(memory exhaustion). (CVE-2020-25671, CVE-2020-25672)

Kiyin (尹亮) discovered that the NFC LLCP protocol implementation in the
Linux kernel did not properly handle error conditions in some situations,
leading to an infinite loop. A local attacker could use this to cause a
denial of service. (CVE-2020-25673)

Piotr Krysiuk and Benedict Schlueter discovered that the eBPF
implementation in the Linux kernel performed out of bounds speculation on
pointer arithmetic. A local attacker could use this to expose sensitive
information. (CVE-2021-29155)

Reiji Watanabe discovered that the KVM VMX implementation in the Linux
kernel did not properly prevent user space from tampering with an array
index value, leading to a potential out-of-bounds write. A local attacker
could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash) or possibly
execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2021-3501)

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Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.

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Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 21.04

After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make
all the necessary changes.

ATTENTION: Due to an unavoidable ABI change the kernel updates have
been given a new version number, which requires you to recompile and
reinstall all third party kernel modules you might have installed.
Unless you manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages
(e.g. linux-generic, linux-generic-lts-RELEASE, linux-virtual,
linux-powerpc), a standard system upgrade will automatically perform
this as well.

References

Related notices

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