Ubuntu 14.04 LTS / 16.04 LTS / 18.04 LTS : python2.7, python3.4, python3.5 vulnerabilities (USN-3817-1)
High Nessus Plugin ID 118954
Synopsis
The remote Ubuntu host is missing one or more security-related patches.
Description
It was discovered that Python incorrectly handled large amounts of data. A remote attacker could use this issue to cause Python to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code.
This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
(CVE-2018-1000030)
It was discovered that Python incorrectly handled running external commands in the shutil module. A remote attacker could use this issue to cause Python to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2018-1000802)
It was discovered that Python incorrectly used regular expressions vulnerable to catastrophic backtracking. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2018-1060, CVE-2018-1061)
It was discovered that Python failed to initialize Expat's hash salt.
A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause hash collisions, leading to a denial of service. (CVE-2018-14647).
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 packages.