This is also important in other environments, for instance shared hosting where you may connect to localhost, or places where you may have given non-admin shell access to a developer (assuming they could not connect to mysql root user).
This is a serious vulnerability. Especially since the latest ubuntu seems to be affected(I'm on mint 13, and it is)
See Ready shodanhq query for latest mysql version:
This vulnerability could also assist with local privilege escalation. If an attacker managers to use a vulnerability in a web application to execute code as a web user account, they can likely access the MySQL server instance via the loopback interface (perhaps a Unix domain socket too?).
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This is also important in other environments, for instance shared hosting where you may connect to localhost, or places where you may have given non-admin shell access to a developer (assuming they could not connect to mysql root user).
This is a serious vulnerability. Especially since the latest ubuntu seems to be affected(I'm on mint 13, and it is)
See Ready shodanhq query for latest mysql version:
http://www.shodanhq.com/search?q=port%3A3306+5.5.22-0ubuntu1
This vulnerability could also assist with local privilege escalation. If an attacker managers to use a vulnerability in a web application to execute code as a web user account, they can likely access the MySQL server instance via the loopback interface (perhaps a Unix domain socket too?).