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I recently came across an extension to a popular CMS that would not install on an Ubuntu 12.04 server, because PHP version 5.3 reached end of live. I was however under the impression that all security upgrades would be backported into Ubuntu 12.04 until its end of live.

I checked this on the changelog of the package: http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/p/php5/php5_5.3.2-1ubuntu4.28/changelog however I see that updates have ended on 28 Oct 2014, whereas many security updates were made to PHP 5.4 since then that I would have expected to be backdated.

On the other hand it may not be feasible to backport from PHP 5.4.

I'm not looking for a way to install the extension, but on advice if Ubuntu 12.04 with all security updates applied is vulnerable to rcent PHp security issues.

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  • "software component that would not install on an Ubuntu 12.04 server, because PHP version 5.3 reached end of live" - that's a strange reason. How did the software component know this? – muru Jan 28 '15 at 20:51
  • This was an extension to Joomla – jdog Jan 28 '15 at 20:52
  • If the extension checks for a minimum version of PHP, then there's nothing much that can be done from Ubuntu's side. – muru Jan 28 '15 at 20:54
  • I'm not looking for a way to install the extension, but on advice if Ubuntu 12.04 with all security updates applied is vulnerable to rcent PHp security issues. Its also likely that I can convince the extension developer to make his version detection more sophisticated - if and only if PHP 5.3 on Ubuntu 12 is actually secure – jdog Jan 28 '15 at 20:55
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    Your comments were very useful. Am currently testing bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=68594 on both Ubuntu 12 and 14 server and will report bug in Launchpad. Results will form the answers. – jdog Jan 28 '15 at 21:14
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The Ubuntu security team will backport security fixes, if the version in a supported Ubuntu release is affected. You can keep an eye on this using the Ubuntu CVE Tracker. For example, a recent CVE (CVE-2014-8142) had Ubuntu 10.04's version of PHP marked as "not-affected". For issues which don't have an associated CVE, you could file a bug on the appropriate Launchpad page, and let the devs decide.

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