dpkg could be made to run programs as your login if it opened a specially crafted file.
USN-986-1 fixed vulnerabilities in bzip2. dpkg statically links against libbz2 and needed to be rebuilt to use the updated libbz2.
20 September 2010
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
dpkg could be made to run programs as your login if it opened a specially crafted file.
USN-986-1 fixed vulnerabilities in bzip2. dpkg statically links against libbz2 and needed to be rebuilt to use the updated libbz2.
Original advisory details:
An integer overflow was discovered in bzip2. If a user or automated system were tricked into decompressing a crafted bz2 file, an attacker could cause bzip2 or any application linked against libbz2 to crash or possibly execute code as the user running 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 update will make all the necessary changes.
Vulmon