USN-3157-1: Apport vulnerabilities

Ubuntu Security Notice USN-3157-1

14th December, 2016

apport vulnerabilities

A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:

• Ubuntu 16.10
• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Summary

Apport could be made to run programs as your login if it opened a specially crafted file.

Software description

• apport - automatically generate crash reports for debugging

Details

Donncha O Cearbhaill discovered that the crash file parser in Apport
improperly treated the CrashDB field as python code. An attacker could
use this to convince a user to open a maliciously crafted crash file
and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of that user. This issue
only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2016-9949)

Donncha O Cearbhaill discovered that Apport did not properly sanitize the
Package and SourcePackage fields in crash files before processing package
specific hooks. An attacker could use this to convince a user to open a
maliciously crafted crash file and execute arbitrary code with the
privileges of that user. (CVE-2016-9950)

Donncha O Cearbhaill discovered that Apport would offer to restart an
application based on the contents of the RespawnCommand or ProcCmdline
fields in a crash file. An attacker could use this to convince a user to
open a maliciously crafted crash file and execute arbitrary code with the
privileges of that user. (CVE-2016-9951)

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 16.10:

apport 2.20.3-0ubuntu8.2

python-apport 2.20.3-0ubuntu8.2

python3-apport 2.20.3-0ubuntu8.2

apport-kde 2.20.3-0ubuntu8.2

apport-gtk 2.20.3-0ubuntu8.2

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS:

apport 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.4

python-apport 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.4

python3-apport 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.4

apport-kde 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.4

apport-gtk 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.4

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:

apport 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.23

python-apport 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.23

python3-apport 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.23

apport-kde 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.23

apport-gtk 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.23

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:

apport 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.15

python-apport 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.15

apport-kde 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.15

apport-gtk 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.15

To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

References

CVE-2016-9949, CVE-2016-9950, CVE-2016-9951