Zack Weinberg discovered an insecure use of a temporary file in os._execvpe from os.py. It uses a predictable name which could lead execution of arbitrary code.
This problem has been fixed in several versions of Python: For the current stable distribution (woody) it has been fixed in version 1.5.2-23.1 of Python 1.5, in version 2.1.3-3.1 of Python 2.1 and in version 2.2.1-4.1 of Python 2.2. For the old stable distribution (potato) this has been fixed in version 1.5.2-10potato12 for Python 1.5. For the unstable distribution (sid) this has been fixed in version 1.5.2-24 of Python 1.5, in version 2.1.3-6a of Python 2.1 and in version 2.2.1-8 of Python 2.2. Python 2.3 is not affected by this problem.
We recommend that you upgrade your Python packages immediately.
MD5 checksums of the listed files are available in the original advisory.