Details
USN-2985-1 fixed vulnerabilities in the GNU C Library. The fix for
CVE-2014-9761 introduced a regression which affected applications that
use the libm library but were not fully restarted after the upgrade.
This update removes the fix for CVE-2014-9761 and a future update
will be provided to address this issue.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Original advisory details:
Martin Carpenter discovered that pt_chown in the GNU C Library did not
 properly check permissions for tty files. A local attacker could use this
 to gain administrative privileges or expose sensitive information.
 (CVE-2013-2207, CVE-2016-2856)
Robin Hack discovered that the Name Service Switch (NSS) implementation in
 the GNU C Library did not properly manage its file descriptors. An attacker
...
USN-2985-1 fixed vulnerabilities in the GNU C Library. The fix for
CVE-2014-9761 introduced a regression which affected applications that
use the libm library but were not fully restarted after the upgrade.
This update removes the fix for CVE-2014-9761 and a future update
will be provided to address this issue.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Original advisory details:
Martin Carpenter discovered that pt_chown in the GNU C Library did not
 properly check permissions for tty files. A local attacker could use this
 to gain administrative privileges or expose sensitive information.
 (CVE-2013-2207, CVE-2016-2856)
Robin Hack discovered that the Name Service Switch (NSS) implementation in
 the GNU C Library did not properly manage its file descriptors. An attacker
 could use this to cause a denial of service (infinite loop).
 (CVE-2014-8121)
Joseph Myers discovered that the GNU C Library did not properly handle long
 arguments to functions returning a representation of Not a Number (NaN). An
 attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (stack exhaustion
 leading to an application crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code.
 (CVE-2014-9761)
Arjun Shankar discovered that in certain situations the nss_dns code in the
 GNU C Library did not properly account buffer sizes when passed an
 unaligned buffer. An attacker could use this to cause a denial of service
 or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2015-1781)
Sumit Bose and Lukas Slebodnik discovered that the Name Service
 Switch (NSS) implementation in the GNU C Library did not handle long
 lines in the files databases correctly. A local attacker could use
 this to cause a denial of service (application crash) or possibly
 execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2015-5277)
Adam Nielsen discovered that the strftime function in the GNU C Library did
 not properly handle out-of-range argument data. An attacker could use this
 to cause a denial of service (application crash) or possibly expose
 sensitive information. (CVE-2015-8776)
Hector Marco and Ismael Ripoll discovered that the GNU C Library allowed
 the pointer-guarding protection mechanism to be disabled by honoring the
 LD_POINTER_GUARD environment variable across privilege boundaries. A local
 attacker could use this to exploit an existing vulnerability more easily.
 (CVE-2015-8777)
Szabolcs Nagy discovered that the hcreate functions in the GNU C Library
 did not properly check its size argument, leading to an integer overflow.
 An attacker could use to cause a denial of service (application crash) or
 possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2015-8778)
Maksymilian Arciemowicz discovered a stack-based buffer overflow in the
 catopen function in the GNU C Library when handling long catalog names. An
 attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (application crash) or
 possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2015-8779)
Florian Weimer discovered that the getnetbyname implementation in the GNU C
 Library did not properly handle long names passed as arguments. An attacker
 could use to cause a denial of service (stack exhaustion leading to an
 application crash). (CVE-2016-3075)
Update instructions
After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make all the necessary changes.
Learn more about how to get the fixes.The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
| Ubuntu Release | Package Version | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 15.10 wily | libc-bin – 2.21-0ubuntu4.3 | ||
| libc6 – 2.21-0ubuntu4.3 | |||
| libc6-dev – 2.21-0ubuntu4.3 | |||
| 14.04 LTS trusty | libc-bin – 2.19-0ubuntu6.9 | ||
| libc6 – 2.19-0ubuntu6.9 | |||
| libc6-dev – 2.19-0ubuntu6.9 | |||
| 12.04 precise | libc-bin – 2.15-0ubuntu10.15 | ||
| libc6 – 2.15-0ubuntu10.15 | |||
| libc6-dev – 2.15-0ubuntu10.15 | |||
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