The new update can be installed with the Software Updater

Sep 17, 2014 18:01 GMT  ·  By

A number of Libav vulnerabilities have been identified and fixed in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) and an update has been issued for the operating system.

The update for this Libav exploit only applies to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and the developers have explained that Libav could have been made to crash or to run programs as the user's login, if it opened a specially crafted file.

"It was discovered that Libav incorrectly handled certain malformed media files. If a user were tricked into opening a crafted media file, an attacker could cause a denial of service via application crash, or possibly execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking the program," is noted in the announcement.

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.

It's possible to update the operating system from a terminal and you will have to be root in order to do it. You only need to enter the following commands in a terminal:

code
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Users also have to know that this is an update from upstream and that it contains fixes and improvements as well.