Synopsis
The remote Ubuntu host is missing one or more security-related patches.
Description
Mohamed Ghannam discovered that a use-after-free vulnerability existed in the Netlink subsystem (XFRM) in the Linux kernel. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2017-16939)
It was discovered that the Linux kernel did not properly handle copy-on- write of transparent huge pages. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (application crashes) or possibly gain administrative privileges. (CVE-2017-1000405)
Fan Wu, Haoran Qiu, and Shixiong Zhao discovered that the associative array implementation in the Linux kernel sometimes did not properly handle adding a new entry. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash). (CVE-2017-12193)
Eric Biggers discovered that the key management subsystem in the Linux kernel did not properly restrict adding a key that already exists but is uninstantiated. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code.
(CVE-2017-15299)
It was discovered that a NULL pointer dereference error existed in the PowerPC KVM implementation in the Linux kernel. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash). (CVE-2017-15306)
Eric Biggers discovered a race condition in the key management subsystem of the Linux kernel around keys in a negative state. A local attacker could use this to cause a denial of service (system crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2017-15951).
Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.
Solution
Update the affected linux-image-4.13-gcp, linux-image-gcp and / or linux-image-gke packages.