14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical has announced that a NetworkManager exploit has been found and fixed for Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS operating systems.
NetworkManager is the component dealing with the network connections for your operating system, so it's a pretty important piece. The problem is not a major one, but that doesn't mean that users shouldn't upgrade as soon as possible.
"Tavis Ormandy discovered that NetworkManager incorrectly filtered paths when requested to read modem device contexts. A local attacker could use this issue to bypass privileges and manipulate modem device configuration or read arbitrary files," reads the security advisory.
For a more detailed description, you can see Canonical's security notification, which covers many more details. 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
Depending on your internet speed and hardware, the process should end pretty quickly. In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes. This is not a critical component, so it's not necessary to also reboot the system.