6.9 - USN-1616-1

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

- Ubuntu 11.04 - Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Summary:

Several security issues were fixed in Python 3.1.

Software Description: - python3.1: An interactive high-level object-oriented language (version 3.1)

Details:

It was discovered that Python would prepend an empty string to sys.path under certain circumstances. A local attacker with write access to the current working directory could exploit this to execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. (CVE-2008-5983)

It was discovered that the audioop module did not correctly perform input validation. If a user or automatated system were tricked into opening a crafted audio file, an attacker could cause a denial of service via application crash. These issues only affected Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. (CVE-2010-1634, CVE-2010-2089)

It was discovered that Python distutils contained a race condition when creating the ~/.pypirc file. A local attacker could exploit this to obtain sensitive information. (CVE-2011-4944)

It was discovered that SimpleXMLRPCServer did not properly validate its input when handling HTTP POST requests. A remote attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service via excessive CPU utilization. (CVE-2012-0845)

It was discovered that Python was susceptible to hash algorithm attacks. An attacker could cause a denial of service under certian circumstances. This update adds the '-R' command line option and honors setting the PYTHONHASHSEED environment variable to 'random' to salt str and datetime objects with an unpredictable value. (CVE-2012-1150)

Serhiy Storchaka discovered that the UTF16 decoder in Python did not properly reset internal variables after error handling. An attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service via memory corruption. (CVE-2012-2135)

Update instructions:

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

Ubuntu 11.04:
python3.1 3.1.3-1ubuntu1.2
python3.1-minimal 3.1.3-1ubuntu1.2

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS:
python3.1 3.1.2-0ubuntu3.2
python3.1-minimal 3.1.2-0ubuntu3.2

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

References:
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-1616-1
CVE-2008-5983, CVE-2010-1634, CVE-2010-2089, CVE-2011-4944,
CVE-2012-0845, CVE-2012-1150, CVE-2012-2135

Package Information:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python3.1/3.1.3-1ubuntu1.2
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python3.1/3.1.2-0ubuntu3.2