Vulnerability Discovered in xz Libraries
An urgent alert for Fedora 40 has been posted and users should pay attention.
On March 28, the Fedora community received word about CVE-2024-3094, which impacted any instance of Fedora 40 that used repositories outside of the stable branch.
The vulnerability is found in the upstream tarballs of the xz application, which is a compression tool that has been around for a long time.
CVE-2024-3094 is marked as critical with a score of 10, which means it is of the highest severity and should be taken seriously.
The issue affects versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 of the xz libraries and is only found in the tarball download package (and not the Git distribution, which lacks the M4 macro trigger).
According to the Red Hat Customer Portal, "Malicious code was discovered in the upstream tarballs of xz, starting with version 5.6.0. Through a series of complex obfuscations, the liblzma build process extracts a prebuilt object file from a disguised test file existing in the source code, which is then used to modify specific functions in the liblzma code. This results in a modified liblzma library that can be used by any software linked against this library, intercepting and modifying the data interaction with this library."
If you're a Fedora 40 beta user, you can resolve this issue by downgrading xz from the testing repositories by issuing the command sudo dnf upgrade --refresh --advisory=FEDORA-2024-d02c7bb266. If you find the command doesn't work, try again later.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.
-
First Release Candidate for Linux Kernel 6.14 Now Available
Linus Torvalds has officially released the first release candidate for kernel 6.14 and it includes over 500,000 lines of modified code, making for a small release.
-
System76 Refreshes Meerkat Mini PC
If you're looking for a small form factor PC powered by Linux, System76 has exactly what you need in the Meerkat mini PC.
-
Gnome 48 Alpha Ready for Testing
The latest Gnome desktop alpha is now available with plenty of new features and improvements.
-
Wine 10 Includes Plenty to Excite Users
With its latest release, Wine has the usual crop of bug fixes and improvements, along with some exciting new features.
-
Linux Kernel 6.13 Offers Improvements for AMD/Apple Users
The latest Linux kernel is now available, and it includes plenty of improvements, especially for those who use AMD or Apple-based systems.
-
Gnome 48 Debuts New Audio Player
To date, the audio player found within the Gnome desktop has been meh at best, but with the upcoming release that all changes.
-
Plasma 6.3 Ready for Public Beta Testing
Plasma 6.3 will ship with KDE Gear 24.12.1 and KDE Frameworks 6.10, along with some new and exciting features.