Canonical has published security details in a recent company announcement regarding the Exiv2 vulnerability in Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn), which it found and patched. It is not a critical issue, but users of this software should update their systems nonetheless.
Several problems were fixed during the last week, and this latest Exiv2 issue is one of them. Of the things I had released for this problem, Exiv2 (EXIF/IPTC metadata manipulation tool) could be responsible for a system crash.
“We discovered that Exiv2 mishandled certain tags in video files. If a user or an automated system opened a specially crafted video file, a remote hacker could cause a crash in Exiv2, resulting in a denial of service”, the security advisory states.
For a more detailed description of the issues, you can view the security advisory from Canonical. The problem can be fixed if the system is upgraded to the latest libexiv2-13 package. To apply the updated code version, the user can simply run the Update Manager, but can also use the command line and run the appropriate commands below:
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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
In general, however, with the standard system upgrade the problem will be solved. Restarting the system is not necessary after installing the update.
