Ubuntu Linux has a worrying safety flaw which will have gone unseen for a decade

Safety researchers discover a number of flaws in service launched a decade in the past
The issues permit malicious actors to escalate privileges and run arbitrary code
A patch is on the market, and customers are urged to use it

Ubuntu Linux has been carrying a number of high-severity vulnerabilities for a decade, permitting malicious actors the power to escalate their privileges to root with out consumer interplay, consultants have warned.

Cybersecurity researchers Qualys discovered the bugs within the OS utility function referred to as ‘needrestart’, a utility that checks which providers have to be restarted after an replace or a change within the system’s libraries or binaries.

It’s significantly helpful after making use of security updates or upgrading packages, because it ensures that the updates are successfully utilized with out requiring a full system reboot.

Exploitable vulnerabilities

Needrestart is able to figuring out providers utilizing outdated libraries, prompting to restart them, and recommending a system reboot when mandatory. In consequence, it helps keep the safety and stability of a system while not having frequent reboots.

It was launched in 2014 and maintained as a Debian package deal. It was weak for the reason that day of its inception, with Ubuntu Linux model 21.04. The 5 vulnerabilities in query are tracked as CVE-2024-48990, CVE-2024-48991, CVE-2024-48992, CVE-2024-10224, and CVE-2024-11003. Needrestart’s earliest weak model is 0.8, and earliest clear model is 3.8, launched earlier this week.

Extra particulars in regards to the vulnerabilities may be discovered here, however in brief – they permit crooks to execute arbitrary code on weak techniques. The one prerequisite is that they’ve native entry, both via malware, or compromised accounts.

Whereas this feels like a strong mitigation, BleepingComputer reminds that attackers exploited comparable Linux elevation of privilege flaws previously, as nicely.

One notable instance is Loony Tunables, which exploited the nf_tables bug. Needrestart is a particularly widespread, and extensively used function, and hackers will most definitely now attempt to exploit it. Due to this fact, it’s important customers improve to model 3.8 or later, as quickly as doable.

By way of BleepingComputer