14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical has revealed details about a Libtasn1 vulnerability that has been found and fixed in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.04 operating systems.
A new exploit that affected the Libtasn1 library has been corrected, as it could have been made to crash or run programs if it processed specially crafted data. It's not a major problem, but it's a good idea to upgrade as soon as possible.
"Hanno Böck discovered that Libtasn1 incorrectly handled certain ASN.1 data. A remote attacker could possibly exploit this with specially crafted ASN.1 data and cause applications using Libtasn1 to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code" is noted in the security notice.
For a more detailed description of the problems, you can see Canonical's security notification. Users have been advised to upgrade their systems as soon as possible.
The flaws can be fixed if you upgrade your system to the latest libtasn1-6 package specific to each distribution. To apply the patch, users will have to run the Update Manager application. In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes, and there is no need for a restart.
You can also use the terminal and enter the following commands (you will need to be root and you will need Internet access):
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade