UBUNTU-CVE-2016-2856

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    UBUNTU-CVE-2016-2856

    Published: 13 Mar 2016Last Modified: 22 Apr 2026
    Upstream:
    CVE-2016-2856
    Aliases:
    USN-2985-1

    Summary:

    Details: pt_chown in the glibc package before 2.19-18+deb8u4 on Debian jessie; the elibc package before 2.15-0ubuntu10.14 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and before 2.19-0ubuntu6.8 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS; and the glibc package before 2.21-0ubuntu4.2 on Ubuntu 15.10 and before 2.23-0ubuntu1 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 16.10 lacks a namespace check associated with file-descriptor passing, which allows local users to capture keystrokes and spoof data, and possibly gain privileges, via pts read and write operations, related to debian/sysdeps/linux.mk. NOTE: this is not considered a vulnerability in the upstream GNU C Library because the upstream documentation has a clear security recommendation against the --enable-pt_chown option.

    References: https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2016-2856, http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-glibc/glibc.git/commit/?h=jessie&id=09f7764882a81e13e7b5d87d715412283a6ce403, http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-glibc/glibc.git/commit/?h=jessie&id=11475c083282c1582c4dd72eecfcb2b7d308c958, http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/03/07/2, https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-2985-1, https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2016-2856

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name: eglibc

    Purl: pkg:deb/ubuntu/[email protected]?arch=source&distro=trusty

    Affected ranges

    Type: ECOSYSTEM

    Events:

    Introduced- 0
    Fixed -2.19-0ubuntu6.8

    Affected versions

    2.17-93ubuntu4

    Common Vulnerability Scoring System

    Attack Vector
    Network
    Adjacent
    Local
    Physical
    Privileges Required
    None
    Low
    High
    User Interaction
    None
    Required
    Scope
    Unchanged
    Changed
    Confidentiality
    None
    Low
    High
    Integrity
    None
    Low
    High
    Availability
    None
    Low
    High