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Ubuntu Security Notice USN-1616-1
October 24, 2012

python3.1 vulnerabilities
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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