debdiff, a part of devscripts, could be made to run programs as your login if it opened a specially crafted file.
Paul Wise discovered that debdiff did not properly sanitize its input when processing .dsc and .changes files. If debdiff processed a crafted file, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking the program. (CVE-2012-0210)
15 February 2012
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
debdiff, a part of devscripts, could be made to run programs as your login if it opened a specially crafted file.
Paul Wise discovered that debdiff did not properly sanitize its input when processing .dsc and .changes files. If debdiff processed a crafted file, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking the program. (CVE-2012-0210)
Raphael Geissert discovered that debdiff did not properly sanitize its input when processing source packages. If debdiff processed an original source tarball, with crafted filenames in the top-level directory, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking the program. (CVE-2012-0211)
Raphael Geissert discovered that debdiff did not properly sanitize its input when processing filename parameters. If debdiff processed a crafted filename parameter, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking the program. (CVE-2012-0212)
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 update will make all the necessary changes.
Vulmon