Users have been asked to upgrade as soon as possible

May 25, 2013 14:17 GMT  ·  By

A security vulnerability that was discovered in the Linux kernel, affecting the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system, has been announced by Canonical.

According to Canonical, several security issues were fixed in the kernel. For example, an error has been discovered in the Linux kernel's credential handling on unix sockets. A local user could exploit this flaw to gain administrative privileges.

The security flaws can be fixed if you upgrade your system(s) to linux-image-3.2.0-44 (3.2.0-44.69).

Don't forget to reboot your computer after the upgrade!

ATTENTION: Due to an unavoidable ABI change, the kernel packages have a new version number, which will force you to reinstall and recompile all third-party kernel modules you might have installed. Moreover, if you use the linux-restricted-modules package, you have to update it as well to get modules that work with the new Linux kernel version.