Tavis Ormandy discovered that gzip did not sufficiently verify the validity of gzip or compress archives while unpacking. By tricking an user or automated system into unpacking a specially crafted compressed file, this could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the user’s privileges.
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
20 September 2006
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
Tavis Ormandy discovered that gzip did not sufficiently verify the validity of gzip or compress archives while unpacking. By tricking an user or automated system into unpacking a specially crafted compressed file, this could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the user’s privileges.
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.
In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect the necessary changes.