Episode 169

Posted on Friday, Jul 22, 2022
It’s the 22.10 mid-cycle roadmap sprint at Canonical this week plus we look at security updates for Git, the Linux kernel, Vim, Python, PyJWT and more.

Show Notes

Overview

It’s the 22.10 mid-cycle roadmap sprint at Canonical this week plus we look at security updates for Git, the Linux kernel, Vim, Python, PyJWT and more.

This week in Ubuntu Security Updates

58 unique CVEs addressed

[USN-5511-1] Git vulnerabilities [00:45]

  • 2 CVEs addressed in Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS), Impish (21.10), Jammy (22.04 LTS)
  • Related to CVE-2022-24765 which we covered back in Episode 157 - this was a vuln in Git for Windows which could allow a local user who could write to C:\ to create a gitconfig that would contain commands that may then get executed by other users when running git themselves
  • Is an issue for Ubuntu since with WSL you can now run git as shipped in Ubuntu on Windows which then would be vulnerable (or at least it was until we fixed it 😁)

[USN-5473-2] ca-certificates update [01:41]

[USN-5513-1] Linux kernel (AWS) vulnerabilities [01:53]

[USN-5514-1] Linux kernel vulnerabilities [03:11]

  • 6 CVEs addressed in Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS)
  • 5.4 GA / HWE for 18.04 LTS as well as various kernels optimised for the different public clouds
  • Bunch of vulns in AX.25 amateur radio protocol implementation - local attacker could possibly crash kernel or privesc - would likely need a custom H/W device to do this though
  • Race condition in the floppy driver -> UAF etc

[USN-5515-1] Linux kernel vulnerabilities [03:41]

[USN-5517-1] Linux kernel (OEM) vulnerabilities [04:04]

  • 2 CVEs addressed in Focal (20.04 LTS)
  • 5.14 OEM
  • OEM kernel contains various hardware enablement features for the different OEM platforms which Ubuntu comes pre-installed on, these eventually find they way back to the GA/HWE kernels

[USN-5518-1] Linux kernel vulnerabilities

[USN-5516-1] Vim vulnerabilities [04:18]

  • 3 CVEs addressed in Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM)
  • vim is definitely fast becoming one of our most updated packages - particularly in 16.04 ESM
  • More bugs found via fuzzing - shows what having a bug bounty can do to shine a light on possible vulnerabilities (or does it just attract shallow bug hunters…) - it’s hard to say for certain how much of a security impact these different vulnerabilities have
  • OOB write + 2 heap buffer overflows - all classified as high priority on the bounty platform ($95 reward apparently for each)

[USN-5520-1, USN-5520-2] HTTP-Daemon vulnerability [05:18]

  • 1 CVEs addressed in Trusty ESM (14.04 ESM), Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM), Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS), Jammy (22.04 LTS)
  • Perl library implementing a simple HTTP server - not often used in production (since would then use nginx or apache)
  • Request smuggling vuln through a crafted Content-Length parameter - could then allow requests that would otherwise be rejected

[USN-5519-1] Python vulnerability [05:54]

  • 1 CVEs addressed in Trusty ESM (14.04 ESM), Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM), Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS), Impish (21.10), Jammy (22.04 LTS)
  • Oldest vuln patched this week - fix and CVE were disclosed back in April this year but the bug was first reported back in 2015 - at that time there was disagreement between the reporter and the upstream developers as to whether this was a real vuln or not - this is a bug in handling of mailcap entries - and mailcap is designed to execute arbitrary commands - but those defined by the user - whereas in this case, if it was used to launch a command on a crafted filename, the filename itself could specify the command to be executed, not what the user had thought that they had configured via their mailcap entry
  • Fixed to appropriately quote the arguments

[USN-5522-1] WebKitGTK vulnerabilities [07:19]

  • 2 CVEs addressed in Focal (20.04 LTS), Jammy (22.04 LTS)
  • Speaking of one of the most updated packages ;)
  • WebKitGTK sees regular upstream security releases (similar to Firefox) and we publish these as they are released
  • UAF via crafted malcious web content -> RCE

[USN-5523-1] LibTIFF vulnerabilities [08:02]

[USN-5524-1] HarfBuzz vulnerability [08:37]

  • 1 CVEs addressed in Focal (20.04 LTS), Jammy (22.04 LTS)
  • Integer overflow discovered via in-built fuzzer within HarrBuzz combined with running HB with UBSan to detect memory corruption
  • Likely heap buffer overflow -> RCE / crash

[USN-5526-1] PyJWT vulnerability [08:58]

  • 1 CVEs addressed in Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS), Jammy (22.04 LTS)
  • JSON web token implementation in python
  • Supports using various crypto algorithms for signing / validation including SSH public keys etc
  • Turns out an attacker could “sign” a JWT with the public half of an SSH key pair as the key for one of the HMAC algorithms - as far as an API user of PyJWT would see, the token would then validate the same as if it had been actually signed by the private key of the same SSH public key pair
  • Fixed to disallow the use of SSH public keys as inputs for signing keys

[USN-5527-1] Checkmk vulnerabilities [09:43]

[USN-5525-1] Apache XML Security for Java vulnerability [09:56]

  • 1 CVEs addressed in Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS)
  • Vuln in handling of crafted XPath transform, where an attacker could read arbitrary local XML files

Goings on in Ubuntu Security Community

22.10 mid-cycle product roadmap sprint [10:13]

  • This week is the 22.10 mid-cycle product roadmap sprint at Canonical
  • Engineering teams at Canonical work on a 6-month development cycle, in-line with the Ubuntu release cycle - even though not all teams work on Ubuntu
  • Each 6 month cycle consists of 3 week-long sprint sessions - 2 product roadmap sprints, and 1 engineering sprint
  • At the start of each cycle there is an initial product roadmap sprint to review the progress / achievements etc of the previous 6 month development cycle and set the goals for the coming development cycle.
  • At the approximate mid-point of that new development cycle, 3 months later, there is the mid-cycle product roadmap sprint to review progress etc along the way
  • Generally consists of managers and senior technical team members from each team presenting on their progress etc and reviews it with the other teams, plus there many cross-team meetings etc
  • Traditionally these were in-person events but with COVID etc they all moved to being virtual - this year has seen the resumption of in-person sprints for the start-of-roadmap sprints but the mid-cycle ones are still virtual
  • As far as the security team is concerned, we talked over various topics like progress on FIPS certification for 22.04 LTS, as well as various AppArmor enhancements, as well as customer specific work-items and general progress on maintenence tasks like CVE patching, MIR security reviews and more.
  • Next roadmap sprint will be at the end of October to review how this cycle went and to set the goals for 23.04 cycle - this will also be followed by an engineering sprint, where all members of the engineering sprint get together for a week in-person to collaborate and hack on whatever their team needs
  • That will then also be followed by a new revived Ubuntu Summit (modeled somewhat like the old Ubuntu Developer Summits) - a chance for folks from the community to gather in person alongside folks from Canonical to discuss and drive forwards various features for Ubuntu and the like.
  • Exciting times ahead!

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