Flaw in Ubuntu's needrestart opens the system to local attackers In an ironic twist of fate, a utility which was developed to help keep Ubuntu systems secure has been revealed to include multiple security vulnerabilities which allow local users to gain root access. The needrestart tool checks to see if the dependencies of a program have been updated, implying the program or service should be restarted. Bleeping Computer reports: "Five local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerabilities have been discovered in the needrestart utility used by Ubuntu Linux, which was introduced over 10 years ago in version 21.04. The flaws were discovered by Qualys and are tracked as CVE-2024-48990, CVE-2024-48991, CVE-2024-48992, CVE-2024-10224, and CVE-2024-11003. They were introduced in needrestart version 0.8, released in April 2014, and fixed only yesterday, in version 3.8. needrestart is a utility commonly used on Linux, including on Ubuntu Server, to identify services that require a restart after package updates, ensuring that those services run the most up-to-date versions of shared libraries." People running Ubuntu should make sure they are running the new, 3.8 version of needrestart.