Dmitry V. Levin discovered a buffer overflow in tar. If a user or automated system were tricked into opening a specially crafted tar file, an attacker could crash tar or possibly execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking the program.
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
15 January 2009
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
Dmitry V. Levin discovered a buffer overflow in tar. If a user or automated system were tricked into opening a specially crafted tar file, an attacker could crash tar or possibly execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking the program.
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.