A zero-day vulnerability in Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash Player software is being exploited to launch malware attacks, the company warned in an advisory issued today.
The vulnerability, rated critical, will not be patched until May 12th.
The company credits Genwei Jiang of FireEye, Inc. with discovering the flaw, which provides an indication that it is being used in targeted attacks.
According to Adobe, the vulnerability is present in Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Chrome OS.
From the Adobe advisory:
A critical vulnerability (CVE-2016-4117) exists in Adobe Flash Player 21.0.0.226 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Chrome OS. Successful exploitation could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.
Adobe is aware of a report that an exploit for CVE-2016-4117 exists in the wild. Adobe will address this vulnerability in our monthly security update, which will be available as early as May 12.
Separately, Adobe issued a patch for three different vulnerabilities in the ColdFusion application server platform.
The company said the flaws could expose users to cross-site scripting, input validation and host name verification attacks.
Adobe also issued a massive patch rollup for the Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader product lines.

Ryan Naraine is Editor-at-Large at SecurityWeek and host of the popular Security Conversations podcast series. He is a security community engagement expert who has built programs at major global brands, including Intel Corp., Bishop Fox and GReAT. Ryan is a founding-director of the Security Tinkerers non-profit, an advisor to early-stage entrepreneurs, and a regular speaker at security conferences around the world.
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