USN-2353-1: APT vulnerability

Ubuntu Security Notice USN-2353-1

23rd September, 2014

apt vulnerability

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

  • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Summary

APT could be made to crash or run programs if it received specially crafted
network traffic.

Software description

  • apt
    – Advanced front-end for dpkg

Details

It was discovered that APT incorrectly handled certain http URLs. If a
remote attacker were able to perform a man-in-the-middle attack, this flaw
could be exploited to cause APT to crash, resulting in a denial of service,
or possibly execute arbitrary code. The default compiler options for
affected releases should reduce the vulnerability to a denial of service.
(CVE-2014-6273)

In addition, this update fixes regressions introduced by the USN-2348-1
security update: APT incorrectly handled file:/// sources on a different
partition, incorrectly handled Dir::state::lists set to a relative path,
and incorrectly handled cdrom: sources.

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:
apt

1.0.1ubuntu2.4.1
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:
apt

0.8.16~exp12ubuntu10.20.1
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS:
apt

0.7.25.3ubuntu9.17.1

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-2014-6273