Mark Shuttleworth, head of Canonical and founder of the Ubuntu project, has called on other Linux developers to synchronize releases of new versions of their distros.
He also pledged to deliver the next Long Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu, version 10.4, in April 2010 - unless, of course, Red Hat, Novell and Debian decide to co-operate on a synchronized release at a different time.
A weakness has been discovered in the random number generator used by OpenSSL on Debian and Ubuntu systems. As a result of this weakness, certain encryption keys are much more common than they should be, such that an attacker could guess the key through a brute-force attack given minimal knowledge of the system.
This particularly affects the use of encryption keys in OpenSSH. This vulnerability only affects operating systems which (like Ubuntu) are based on Debian. However, other systems can be indirectly affected if weak keys are imported into them.
We consider this an extremely serious vulnerability, and urge all users to act immediately to secure their systems. The following Ubuntu releases are affected: Ubuntu 7.04 Ubuntu 7.10 Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
This advisory also applies to the corresponding versions of Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Xubuntu.
Please see usn-612-2 for the latest information regarding updating your system and taking appropriate protective measures. More information will be released within 48 hours.
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