Severity: High
Summary:
- These vulnerabilities affect: Adobe Shockwave and Flash Player
- How an attacker exploits them: Multiple vectors of attack, including enticing your users to open malicious files or visit specially crafted web sites
- Impact: Various results; in the worst case, an attacker can gain complete control of your computer
- What to do: Install the appropriate Adobe patches immediately, or let Adobe’s updater do it for you.
Exposure:
Yesterday, Adobe released two security bulletins describing vulnerabilities in both Shockwave and Flash Player. A remote attacker could exploit the worst of these flaws to gain complete control of your computer. The summary below details some of the vulnerabilities in these popular software packages.
- APSB13-06: Two Shockwave Player Vulnerabilities
Adobe Shockwave Player displays interactive, animated web content and movies called Shockwave. According to Adobe, the Shockwave Player is installed on some 450 million PCs.
Adobe’s bulletin describes two security vulnerabilities that affect Shockwave Player 11.6.8.638 and earlier for Windows and Macintosh (as well as all earlier versions). Both flaws consist of memory corruption vulnerabilities (one being a stack buffer overflow), which share the same general scope and impact. If an attacker can entice one of your users into visiting a website containing some sort of malicious Shockwave content, he could exploit many of these vulnerabilities to execute code on that user’s computer, with that user’s privileges. If your Windows users have local administrator privileges, an attacker could exploit this flaw to gain full control of their PC.
Adobe Priority Rating: 2 for Windows (Patch within 30 days)
- APSB11-21 : Flash Player Update Corrects 13 Security Flaws
Adobe Flash Player displays interactive, animated web content called Flash. A report from Secunia states that 99% of Windows computers have Adobe Flash Player installed, so you users very likely have it.
Adobe’s update fixes 17 security vulnerabilities in Flash Player (for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android), which they only describe in minimal detail. The flaws include buffer overflow vulnerabilities, “use after free” flaws, and other memory corruption issues. Though the vulnerabilities differ technically, most share the same scope and impact. In the worst case, if an attacker can lure one of your users to a web site with malicious Flash content, they could exploit some of these flaws to gain control of that user’s computer. We assume the attacker would only gain the privileges of the logged-in user. However, since most Windows users have local administrator privileges, the attacker would likely gain full control of Windows machines.
Flash has suffered many zero day vulnerabilities recently. This is actually the second Flash update for the month; the last being an emergency update. Since attackers are exploiting these vulnerabilities actively, we highly recommend you patch immediately.
Adobe Priority Rating: 1 for Windows (Patch within 72 hours)
Solution Path:
Adobe has released updates for all their affected software. If you use any of the software below, we recommend you download and deploy the corresponding updates as soon as possible, or let Adobe’s automatic updater do it for you:
- APSB13-06: Upgrade to Shockwave 12.0.0.112
- APSB13-05: Upgrade to the latest Flash Player (11.6.602.168 for Windows)
For All WatchGuard Users:
Attackers can exploit these flaws using diverse exploitation methods. However, WatchGuard’s XTM appliances can help in many ways. First, our IPS and AV services are often capable of detecting the malicious Flash or Shockwave files attackers are actually using in the wild. If you’d like, you can also configure our proxies to block Shockwave or Flash content. This, however, blocks both legitimate and malicious content. If you do want to block this Flash or Shockwave via the Web or email, see our manual for more details on how to configure our proxy policies’ content-filtering.
Status:
Adobe has released patches correcting these issues.
References:
This alert was researched and written by Corey Nachreiner, CISSP (@SecAdept)