grep <2.11 is vulnerable to command execution vulnerability, and it is not possible to patch unless you build the source directly from the git repo. ubuntu 12.04(And everything else, I would assume) uses version 2.10 of grep. it is not possible to upgrade without downloading the src and building it yourself. PoC: perl -e 'print "x"x(2**31)' | grep x > /dev/null This is the grep news form for this: * Noteworthy changes in release 2.11 (2012-03-02) [stable] ** Bug fixes grep no longer dumps core on lines whose lengths do not fit in 'int'. (e.g., lines longer than 2 GiB on a typical 64-bit host). Instead, grep either works as expected, or reports an error. An error can occur if not enough main memory is available, or if the GNU C library's regular expression functions cannot handle such long lines. [bug present since "the beginning"] Solution: Send out a grep update with atleast 2.11 grep from http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git References: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grep/+bug/1091473 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-grep/2012-12/msg00004.html http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2012/q4/509 Reproducible: Always
2.14 has already gone stable
although, i'd also point out grep 2.12 has been stable since ~August
(In reply to comment #1) > 2.14 has already gone stable Yes. The purpose of the bugreport is to track the issue and to send the glsa. @security, please file the request.
New GLSA request filed.
*** Bug 448708 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
CVE-2012-5667 (http://nvd.nist.gov/nvd.cfm?cvename=CVE-2012-5667): Multiple integer overflows in GNU Grep before 2.11 might allow context-dependent attackers to execute arbitrary code via vectors involving a long input line that triggers a heap-based buffer overflow.
This issue was resolved and addressed in GLSA 201403-07 at http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-201403-07.xml by GLSA coordinator Mikle Kolyada (Zlogene).