14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical revealed that several security issues have been discovered and fixed in the Linux kernel affecting the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system.
According to Canonical, the kernel has received quite a few patches and numerous developers have contributed with code.
"Andy Lutomirski discovered an information leak in the Linux kernel's Thread Local Storage (TLS) implementation allowing users to bypass the espfix to obtain information that could be used to bypass the Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) protection mechanism. A local user could exploit this flaw to obtain potentially sensitive information from kernel memory," is noted in the security announcement.
The security flaws can be fixed if you upgrade your system to linux-image-3.2.0-76-generic (3.2.0-76.111), or the equivalent for the specific platform.
Don't forget to reboot your computer after the upgrade!
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. This is possible if you have manually installed the NVIDIA drivers, for example.