Canonical has released several patches addressing flaws in the Linux kernel and OpenSSL that left Ubuntu users open to escalation of privilege and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

The most serious of the fixes covers a variety of flaws that could be used to gain elevated or administrative privileges on the victim machine.

"A memory corruption issue was discovered in AES decryption when using the Intel AES-NI accelerated code path. A remote attacker could exploit this flaw to cause a DoS (system crash) or potentially escalate privileges on Intel-based machines," read the Ubuntu security advisory.

Also: A Couple of CUPS Exploits Have Been Closed in Ubuntu

Ubuntu Releases Security Update

Hello everyone,

Busy day today. The final OTA-4 candidate is almost ready. We built 2
snapshot-images today - first one didn't include one fix due to a
missing package copy, second one with everything ready is now being
tested by QA. All in all, once OTA tests are finished, we'll hand it
over to BQ and release. Hopefully the final OTA-4 release should happen
on Monday. But thanks to all of that we included another MMS related fix
to the whole batch.

Cheers!

Chances are pretty good you've heard of either Firefox OS or Ubuntu Touch (aka Ubuntu Phone). Chances are not so good that you've actually seen one in action. There's a reason for that--when first officially released, both platforms aimed low. The Firefox OS set its sights on low-end devices and smaller markets. The Ubuntu Phone had the unlikely misfortune of being first released on an underpowered device (for such a powerful platform). This low-end hardware ensured one thing--the major markets would completely ignore the platforms.

The search in Unity has been the source of serious debates in the past few years, but that should change dramatically with the new Unity 8, which no longer needs the current privacy tab that is available in the options.