USN-868-1: GRUB 2 vulnerability

Publication date

9 December 2009

Overview

GRUB 2 vulnerability

Releases


Packages

Details

It was discovered that GRUB 2 did not properly validate passwords. An
attacker with physical access could conduct a brute force attack and bypass
authentication by submitting a 1 character password.

It was discovered that GRUB 2 did not properly validate passwords. An
attacker with physical access could conduct a brute force attack and bypass
authentication by submitting a 1 character password.

Update instructions

In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the necessary changes. Users who have upgraded from GRUB Legacy to GRUB 2 and did not run 'upgrade-from-grub-legacy' (ie those who are still using Grub Legacy to chainload into GRUB 2) will have to run the following command (possibly adjusting 'hd0') to update GRUB 2's on disk core image: $ sudo grub-install --no-floppy --grub-setup=/bin/true "(hd0)"

Learn more about how to get the fixes.

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu Release Package Version
9.10 karmic grub2 –  1.97~beta4-1ubuntu4.1

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