Adobe has released security updates to patch nearly a dozen serious vulnerabilities affecting the Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Flash Player.
A total of 11 critical flaws have been identified in Flash Player 16.0.0.305 and earlier versions for Mac and Windows, and Flash Player 11.2.202.442 and earlier 11.x Linux versions. According to Adobe, the vulnerabilities can be exploited to take control of impacted systems.
The list of security bugs includes four memory corruption flaws that can be leveraged for arbitrary code execution (CVE-2015-0332, CVE-2015-0333, CVE-2015-0335, CVE-2015-0339). The issues have been identified and reported by Mark Brand and Chris Evans of Google Project Zero, Yuki Chen and Xiaoning Li of Intel Labs, and Haifei Li of McAfee Labs.
Other vulnerabilities that could lead to arbitrary code execution are a couple of type confusions (CVE-2015-0334, CVE-2015-0336) reported by Google Project Zero affiliate Natalie Silvanovich, an integer overflow (CVE-2015-0338), and two use-after-free bugs (CVE-2015-0341, CVE-2015-0342) identified by the researcher “bilou” and Jihui Lu of KeenTeam.
Soroush Dalili of NCC Group identified a cross-domain policy bypass (CVE-2015-0337) and a file upload restriction bypass flaw (CVE-2015-0340).
There is no indication that any of these vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild, but the “priority 1” rating suggests that the flaws have a higher risk of being targeted by exploits.
Windows and Mac users are advised to update their installations to Flash Player version 17.0.0.134. The latest Linux version is 11.2.202.451. Flash Player installed with Chrome and Internet Explorer will be updated automatically.
Researchers constantly discover serious vulnerabilities in Flash Player, and security experts have been advising users not to install the application unless it’s necessary. Since the beginning of the year, Adobe has had to release updates to address three zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild by malicious actors.