14 DAY TRIAL // Details about a Libtasn1 vulnerability that was affecting Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS have been published in a security notice by Canonical.
Libtasn1 is the library that controls ASN.1 structures and looks like it could have been made to crash or run programs, if it processed specially crafted data. This is not a major issue, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't 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, you can see Canonical's security notification. Users are advised to upgrade their systems as soon as possible. You can either upgrade Ubuntu with the regular tool or you can also use the terminal to upgrade the system. Just enter these commands in a terminal near you:
[CODE=0]sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade[CODE=1
In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes. This is not a core component, so it's not necessary to also reboot the system.