14 DAY TRIAL // On July 2, in a security notice, Canonical published details about a curl vulnerability in its Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS operating systems.
According to Canonical, libcurl could have been made to crash or to run programs, as the user's login, if it received specially crafted input.
It has been discovered that libcurl incorrectly handled memory when parsing URL encoded strings. An attacker could have used this issue to cause libcurl to crash, leading to a denial of service, or to the execution of arbitrary code.
For a more detailed description of the security problems, you can see Canonical's security notification.
The security flaws can be fixed if you upgrade your system(s) to the latest libcurl3-nss, libcurl3-gnutls, and libcurl3 packages, specific to each distribution. To apply the update, run the Update Manager application.
In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes. A system restart will not be necessary to implement the changes.