USN-3597-1: Linux kernel vulnerabilities

15 March 2018

Several security issues were fixed in the Linux kernel.

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Releases

Packages

Details

USNS 3541-1 and 3523-1 provided mitigations for Spectre and Meltdown
(CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5754) for the i386, amd64,
and ppc64el architectures in Ubuntu 17.10. This update provides
the corresponding mitigations for the arm64 architecture. Original
advisory details:

Jann Horn discovered that microprocessors utilizing speculative execution
and indirect branch prediction may allow unauthorized memory reads via
sidechannel attacks. This flaw is known as Meltdown. A local attacker could
use this to expose sensitive information, including kernel memory.
(CVE-2017-5754)

Jann Horn discovered that microprocessors utilizing speculative execution
and branch prediction may allow unauthorized memory reads via sidechannel
attacks. This flaw is known as Spectre. A local attacker could use this to
expose sensitive information, including kernel memory. (CVE-2017-5715,
CVE-2017-5753)

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Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 17.10

After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make
all the necessary changes.

ATTENTION: Due to an unavoidable ABI change the kernel updates have
been given a new version number, which requires you to recompile and
reinstall all third party kernel modules you might have installed.
Unless you manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages
(e.g. linux-generic, linux-generic-lts-RELEASE, linux-virtual,
linux-powerpc), a standard system upgrade will automatically perform
this as well.

References

Related notices

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