Yesterday, June 4, Greg Kroah-Hartman, who has been in charge of the maintenance of series 5 of the linux kernel, He launched Linux 5.0.21. Practically at the same time, a kernel update appeared in the Ubuntu family operating systems, which as you know are its main version and its official flavors Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin and Ubuntu Studio. At first we did not know the reason for the launch, but we have already discovered it.
The version that Canonical released came numbered 5.0.0-16.17 on Disco Dingo and did so for fix security flaws. It is now available in all Ubuntu flavors that are still supported, which matches versions 19.04, 18.10, 18.04, and 16.04. One of these flaws only affects 32-bit operating systems whose versions are earlier than Disco Dingo. Ubuntu 19.04 and Ubuntu 19.10 are not affected by this bug.
Linux Kernel 5.0.0-16.17 fixes various security flaws
The aforementioned flaw could allow a local user to improve their chances of exploiting an existing vulnerability in the binary. setuid a.out. As a measure to make this more difficult, the update disables support for a out. In Ubuntu 19.04 and Ubuntu 16.04, the update also fixes a bug in the LSI Logic MegaRAID driver that could allow a local attacker to freeze the operating system. Another flaw could allow a local attacker to freeze and operating system executing arbitrary code.
The new versions are the aforementioned 5.0.0-16-17 for Disco Dingo, 4.18.0-21.22 for Ubuntu 18.10, 4.15.0.51.55 for Ubuntu 18.04, 4.4.0-150.176 for Ubuntu 16.04, 4.18.0.21.22. 18.04.1 ~ 18.04.2 for Ubuntu 4.15.0 and 51.55-16.04.1 ~ 16.04.6 for Ubuntu XNUMX.
All users are encouraged to update as soon as possible.. This is something that we must always do to avoid security problems, but we should not be too alarmed if we take into account that the failures must be exploited having physical access to the equipment and how easy it is to update, something that we can do from the different centers of software. Have you already updated to the latest version of the Ubuntu kernel?