USN-2983-1: Expat vulnerability

Ubuntu Security Notice USN-2983-1

18th May, 2016

expat vulnerability

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

• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 15.10
• Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Summary

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

Software description

• expat - XML parsing C library

Details

Gustavo Grieco discovered that Expat incorrectly handled malformed XML
data. If a user or application linked against Expat were tricked into
opening a crafted XML file, an attacker could cause a denial of service, or
possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2016-0718)

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS:

libexpat1 2.1.0-7ubuntu0.16.04.1

lib64expat1 2.1.0-7ubuntu0.16.04.1

Ubuntu 15.10:

libexpat1 2.1.0-7ubuntu0.15.10.1

lib64expat1 2.1.0-7ubuntu0.15.10.1

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:

libexpat1 2.1.0-4ubuntu1.2

lib64expat1 2.1.0-4ubuntu1.2

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:

libexpat1 2.0.1-7.2ubuntu1.3

lib64expat1 2.0.1-7.2ubuntu1.3

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

After a standard system upgrade you need to restart any applications linked
against Expat to effect the necessary changes.

References

CVE-2016-0718