In the wild Flash hack prompts emergency Adobe security patch

Updated happygeek 0 736 Views

If you are a user of Adobe Flash, be sure to apply the latest security update if you want to avoid becoming part of an in-the-wild attack exploiting a vulnerability which currently seems to be exploiting users of Internet Explorer on the Windows platform only. Adobe has, however, issued an emergency security patch for Android, Linux and Mac users as well as those with Windows which kind of suggests it could be indicative of a wider problem with the software.

dweb-flash Adobe is recommending that any users of Flash Player v11.2.202.233 and earlier for Windows, Mac and Linux should update to v11.2.202.235 and Android 4.x users of v11.1.115.7 and earlier should update to 11.1.115.8, Android 3.x users of 11.1.111.8 should move to 11.1.111.9 while those users with the Google Chrome installed Flash Player need do nothing as the update will have been applied automatically.

The Adobe Security Bulletin (APSB12-09) is determined as being critical, with the object confusion vulnerability (CVE-2012-0779) being actively exploited in the wild as I write. The exploit will arrive in the form of an email with attachment, and infection can only occur if the user clicks on that attached file to execute it. Once again, it's a message to all those who have itchy link-clicking fingers not to blindly think everything you get sent in the mail is OK to look at.

Windows users who opted in to the recently introduced silent update feature will have been protected by the security update as soon as it was made available and need do nothing further in order to protect all web browser clients installed on their system.

Adobe advise users who are confused about which version of Flash they are currently running to access the 'About Flash Player' page or right-click on any content running in Flash Player and select "About Adobe (or Macromedia) Flash Player" from the menu. A check which will have to be applied for every browser you have installed if you have not applied that silent update feature on Windows.

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As flagged, this was a serious in-the-wild exploit and it shows the classic document->plugin attack chain: attackers sent a malicious Word attachment (the well‑publicised "World Uyghur Congress Invitation.doc") that caused the victim to load a crafted SWF, which then led to code execution on vulnerable machines. This sample and walk‑throughs are preserved in contemporaneous malware analysis posts. (contagiodump.blogspot.com)

Practical, modern advice for anyone landing on this thread years later: Adobe Flash Player is officially end‑of‑life and no longer being patched, so the safest course is to remove it from all endpoints. Enterprise teams should decommission Flash, apply vendor removal tools or the OS removal updates, or isolate any remaining Flash workloads on dedicated, disposable VMs. If a quick cleanup is needed, run Adobe’s official uninstaller for your platform and then verify browsers and leftover folders are cleaned. ()

If Flash content must be preserved for business or archival reasons, do not leave the original plugin exposed to general browsing. Use preservation tools or safer emulators: Flashpoint provides a curated, offline archive/launcher for many legacy SWF titles, and Ruffle is an actively developed open‑source emulator (WebAssembly) that runs many SWFs more safely than the old native plugin. Both approaches are far preferable to keeping a live, unsupported Flash Player installed. (flashpointarchive.org)

About ’s debate (Adobe vs JavaScript): the root cause was not JavaScript itself but the plugin model and native, memory‑unsafe runtimes that processed complex binary formats. Binary plugins expanded the attack surface and often ran outside modern browser sandboxes; removing that attack surface — via HTML5, stronger sandboxing, and killing off legacy plugins — is what fixed the problem in the long run. The industry did exactly that, which is why Flash was phased out. (wired.com)

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happygeek 2,411 Most Valuable Poster

Had an interesting chat with a 'security researcher' friend of mine who pondered: is Adobe the new Microsoft as far as being sloppy on the security coding front is concerned, or should we really be pointing the finger of blame in the direction of JavaScript for the problems that both companies face with regards to browser-based exploits?

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