libXfont could be made to crash or run programs as an administrator if it opened a specially crafted bdf font file.
Ilja van Sprundel, Alan Coopersmith, and William Robinet discovered that libXfont incorrectly handled malformed bdf fonts. A local attacker could use this issue to cause libXfont to crash, or possibly execute arbitrary code in order to gain privileges.
18 March 2015
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
libXfont could be made to crash or run programs as an administrator if it opened a specially crafted bdf font file.
Ilja van Sprundel, Alan Coopersmith, and William Robinet discovered that libXfont incorrectly handled malformed bdf fonts. A local attacker could use this issue to cause libXfont to crash, or possibly execute arbitrary code in order to gain 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.
After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make all the necessary changes.