USN-2935-1: PAM vulnerabilities

Ubuntu Security Notice USN-2935-1

16th March, 2016

pam vulnerabilities

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

  • Ubuntu 15.10
  • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Summary

Several security issues were fixed in PAM.

Software description

  • pam
    – Pluggable Authentication Modules

Details

It was discovered that the PAM pam_userdb module incorrectly used a
case-insensitive method when comparing hashed passwords. A local attacker
could possibly use this issue to make brute force attacks easier. This
issue only affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2013-7041)

Sebastian Krahmer discovered that the PAM pam_timestamp module incorrectly
performed filtering. A local attacker could use this issue to create
arbitrary files, or possibly bypass authentication. This issue only
affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2014-2583)

Sebastien Macke discovered that the PAM pam_unix module incorrectly handled
large passwords. A local attacker could possibly use this issue in certain
environments to enumerate usernames or cause a denial of service.
(CVE-2015-3238)

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 15.10:
libpam-modules

1.1.8-3.1ubuntu3.1
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:
libpam-modules

1.1.8-1ubuntu2.1
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:
libpam-modules

1.1.3-7ubuntu2.1

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-2013-7041,

CVE-2014-2583,

CVE-2015-3238

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