Ubuntu Security Notice USN-2836-1
15th December, 2015
grub2 vulnerability
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its
derivatives:
- Ubuntu 15.10
- Ubuntu 15.04
- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
- Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Summary
GRUB password protection can be bypassed.
Software description
- grub2
– GRand Unified Bootloader
Details
Hector Marco and Ismael Ripoll discovered that GRUB incorrectly handled
the backspace key when configured to use authentication. A local attacker
could use this issue to bypass GRUB password protection.
Update instructions
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following
package version:
- Ubuntu 15.10:
-
grub2-common
2.02~beta2-29ubuntu0.2
- Ubuntu 15.04:
-
grub2-common
2.02~beta2-22ubuntu1.4
- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:
-
grub2-common
2.02~beta2-9ubuntu1.6
- Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:
-
grub2-common
1.99-21ubuntu3.19
To update your system, please follow these instructions:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.
After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make
all the necessary changes.