14 DAY TRIAL // Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, operating systems have been updated to fix a couple of CUPS vulnerabilities that have been found.
A new CUPS update was released yesterday, and the Ubuntu maintainers have been quick to integrate the security patches that came with them. CUPS stands for Common UNIX Printing System and it’s the component that deals with the printing process.
"It was discovered that CUPS incorrectly handled reference counting when handling localized strings. A remote attacker could use this issue to escalate permissions, upload a replacement CUPS configuration file, and execute arbitrary code," reads the security advisory.
This is just one of the exploits that have been found and fixed. For a more detailed description of the problems, you can see Canonical's security notification. Users should upgrade their OS as soon as possible.
In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes. A reboot of the system is not required because CUPS is not a core component in Linux systems. Nevertheless, upgrading the OS is never a bad idea.
You can also use the terminal to update the system. Just enter these commands in a terminal near you and wait for the process to complete:
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade