Several security issues were fixed in GNU cpio.
Alexander Cherepanov discovered that GNU cpio incorrectly handled symbolic links when used with the –no-absolute-filenames option. If a user or automated system were tricked into extracting a specially-crafted cpio archive, a remote attacker could possibly use this issue to write arbitrary files. This issue only affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2015-1197)
22 February 2016
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
Several security issues were fixed in GNU cpio.
Alexander Cherepanov discovered that GNU cpio incorrectly handled symbolic links when used with the –no-absolute-filenames option. If a user or automated system were tricked into extracting a specially-crafted cpio archive, a remote attacker could possibly use this issue to write arbitrary files. This issue only affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2015-1197)
Gustavo Grieco discovered that GNU cpio incorrectly handled memory when extracting archive files. If a user or automated system were tricked into extracting a specially-crafted cpio archive, a remote attacker could use this issue to cause GNU cpio to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2016-2037)
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.