CVE-2020-15701 Unhandled exception in apport
A local attacker can cause a denial of service in the Ubuntu apport crash reporter by providing a malformed XML file with a string mtime attribute.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2020-15701?
CVE-2020-15701 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Canonical Ubuntu Linux, published on 6 Aug 2020. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
An unhandled exception in check_ignored() in apport/report.py can be exploited by a local attacker to cause a denial of service. If the mtime attribute is a string value in apport-ignore.xml, it will trigger an unhandled exception, resulting in a crash. Fixed in 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.24, 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.16, 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.6.
Weakness: CWE-755
Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-15701?
It affects 2 products.
Products include Canonical Apport, Canonical Ubuntu Linux.
How do I fix CVE-2020-15701?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2020-15701 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-15701 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Canonical Ubuntu Linux
Sources
Also known as GHSA-r3r2-rv2r-78wf, UBUNTU-CVE-2020-15701.