USN-3717-1: PolicyKit vulnerabilities

Releases

• Ubuntu 18.04 ESM
• Ubuntu 17.10
• Ubuntu 16.04 ESM
• Ubuntu 14.04 ESM

Packages

• policykit-1 - framework for managing administrative policies and privileges

Details

Tavis Ormandy discovered that PolicyKit incorrectly handled certain invalid
object paths. A local attacker could possibly use this issue to cause
PolicyKit to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only
affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2015-3218)

It was discovered that PolicyKit incorrectly handled certain duplicate
action IDs. A local attacker could use this issue to cause PolicyKit to
crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly escalate privileges.
This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2015-3255)

Tavis Ormandy discovered that PolicyKit incorrectly handled duplicate
cookie values. A local attacker could use this issue to cause PolicyKit to
crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly escalate privileges.
This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2015-4625)

Matthias Gerstner discovered that PolicyKit incorrectly checked users. A
local attacker could possibly use this issue to cause authentication
dialogs to show up for other users, leading to a denial of service or an
information leak. (CVE-2018-1116)

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 18.04

• libpolkit-backend-1-0 - 0.105-20ubuntu0.18.04.1

Ubuntu 17.10

• libpolkit-backend-1-0 - 0.105-18ubuntu0.1

Ubuntu 16.04

• libpolkit-backend-1-0 - 0.105-14.1ubuntu0.1

Ubuntu 14.04

• libpolkit-backend-1-0 - 0.105-4ubuntu3.14.04.2

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

References

• CVE-2015-3218
• CVE-2015-3255
• CVE-2015-4625
• CVE-2018-1116

Related notices

• USN-3717-2: libpolkit-backend-1-0, policykit-1