Overview
In this week’s episode we look at how to get media coverage for your shiny
new vulnerability, plus we cover security updates for ExifTool,
ImageMagick, BlueZ and more.
This week in Ubuntu Security Updates
[USN-4986-2] rpcbind vulnerability [00:44]
1 CVEs addressed in Trusty ESM (14.04 ESM), Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM)CVE-2017-8779 Episode 119 (bionic) - memory leak on crafted requests[USN-4986-3, USN-4986-4] rpcbind regression [01:11]
Affecting Trusty ESM (14.04 ESM), Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM), Bionic (18.04 LTS)Original fix missed follow-up patches to correct problems in the upstreamfix - required multiple other bits to work correctly
[USN-4971-2] libwebp vulnerabilities [01:34]
10 CVEs addressed in Trusty ESM (14.04 ESM), Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM)CVE-2020-36331 CVE-2020-36330 CVE-2020-36329 CVE-2020-36328 CVE-2018-25014 CVE-2018-25013 CVE-2018-25012 CVE-2018-25011 CVE-2018-25010 CVE-2018-25009 Episode 118[USN-4987-1] ExifTool vulnerability [01:50]
1 CVEs addressed in Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS), Groovy (20.10), Hirsute (21.04)CVE-2021-22204 Was originally reported to gitlab via hackerone as exiftool is used onimage uploads to redact image metadata etc - they coordinated the fix
with exiftool upstream. RCE when parsing a malicious DjVu image - uses
perl to parse DjVu and in doing so it eval’s certain constructs without
properly validating them
[USN-4988-1] ImageMagick vulnerabilities [03:17]
34 CVEs addressed in Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS), Groovy (20.10)CVE-2021-20176 CVE-2020-27776 CVE-2020-27775 CVE-2020-27774 CVE-2020-27773 CVE-2020-27772 CVE-2020-27771 CVE-2020-27770 CVE-2020-27769 CVE-2020-27768 CVE-2020-27767 CVE-2020-27766 CVE-2020-27765 CVE-2020-27764 CVE-2020-27763 CVE-2020-27762 CVE-2020-27761 CVE-2020-27760 CVE-2020-27759 CVE-2020-27758 CVE-2020-27757 CVE-2020-27756 CVE-2020-27755 CVE-2020-27754 CVE-2020-27753 CVE-2020-27751 CVE-2020-27750 CVE-2020-25676 CVE-2020-25675 CVE-2020-25674 CVE-2020-25666 CVE-2020-25665 CVE-2020-19667 CVE-2017-14528 every ~30 weeks we seem to have another ImageMagick update - so that time again ;)DoS, RCE etc[USN-4989-1] BlueZ vulnerabilities [03:56]
3 CVEs addressed in Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS), Groovy (20.10), Hirsute (21.04)CVE-2021-3588 CVE-2020-27153 CVE-2020-26558 1 bluetooth core specification issue - during pairing a nearby attackercould interpose on the pairing process and hence complete the pairing
instead of the intended device
2 issues in bluez code itselfdouble free (UAF) + OOB readGoings on in Ubuntu Security Community
How to get media coverage for your Linux vulnerabilities [04:48]
In Episode 119 covered an update for polkit - the following day Githubpublished a blog post with significant details of the vuln - then we saw
a heap of media coverage
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/linux_polkit_package_patched/https://www.zdnet.com/article/nasty-linux-systemd-root-level-security-bug-revealed-and-patched/Why did this vuln get so much coverage when lots of others don’t?Great technical detail from a reputable and popular source (github)Very clearly written and easy to understandIs a simple logic error that can be triggered via a race-condition ina privileged daemon
PoC can be implemented as a 1 line bash invocation so is also simpleto understand
c.f. a complicated memory corruption vuln or similar (ie no need tounderstand memory management, heap grooming etc etc)
Or give it a cool name and logoheartbleed was one of the first to do this and this likely helped itget noticed and patched (plus fame/notoriety for the researchers)
Since then we have seen many (shellshock, stagefright, dirty cow,spectre, meltdown, boothole etc) but not all vulns that get names/logos
are created equal - impact / exploitability varies greatly - so a name
and a logo doesn’t necessarily mean a vuln is critical
Get in contact
#ubuntu-security on the Libera.Chat IRC networkubuntu-hardened mailing listSecurity section on discourse.ubuntu.com@ubuntu_sec on twitter