It was discovered that PCRE did not correctly handle very long strings containing UTF8 sequences. In certain situations, an attacker could exploit applications linked against PCRE by tricking a user or automated system in processing a malicious regular expression leading to a denial of service or possibly arbitrary code execution.
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
21 February 2008
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
It was discovered that PCRE did not correctly handle very long strings containing UTF8 sequences. In certain situations, an attacker could exploit applications linked against PCRE by tricking a user or automated system in processing a malicious regular expression leading to a denial of service or possibly arbitrary code execution.
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 upgrade you need to reboot your computer to effect the necessary changes.
Vulmon