Canonical Releases New Linux Kernel Update for Ubuntu 17.10 and 16.04 HWE Users

Coming a few days after the last kernel update released earlier this week, which included mitigations for the Spectre security vulnerability that puts billions of devices at risk of attacks, today’s security update addresses a logic error in Linux kernel’s x86-64 syscall entry implementation, discovered by Jay Vosburgh. According to the security advisory published today by Canonica, it would appear that the security issue has been introduced by the mitigations for the Spectre hardware bug, and it could allow a local attacker to either execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (DoS attack).