14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical has announced that a few vulnerabilities were found in the Linux kernel packages, affecting the OMAP4 kernel of the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system, and they have been fixed.
The problems that affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) OMAP4 operating system are described in the security notifications: CVE-2014-8159, CVE-2015-1593, CVE-2015-2041, and CVE-2015-2042.
"It was discovered that the Linux kernel's Infiniband subsystem did not properly sanitize its input parameters while registering memory regions from userspace. A local user could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service (system crash) or to potentially gain administrative privileges" is noted in the security notice.
This is just one of the problems found and corrected with the latest update. The security flaws can be fixed if you upgrade your system to the linux-image-3.2.0-1462-omap4 (3.2.0-1462.82) package. Don't forget to reboot your computer after the upgrade. It can be postponed, but the update needs the restart in order to be completed.
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.