Decades-Old Security Vulnerabilities Found in Ubuntu's Needrestart Package

Captain Awesome

Level 27
Thread author
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Forum Veteran
May 7, 2016
1,646
11,313
2,569
India
Multiple decade-old security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the needrestart package installed by default in Ubuntu Server (since version 21.04) that could allow a local attacker to gain root privileges without requiring user interaction.
The Qualys Threat Research Unit (TRU), which identified and reported the flaws early last month, said they are trivial to exploit, necessitating that users move quickly to apply the fixes. The vulnerabilities are believed to have existed since the introduction of interpreter support in needrestart 0.8, which was released on April 27, 2014.