As it promised on Tuesday, Adobe has issued an emergency update for Flash Player to patch a zero-day vulnerability whose existence came to light after hackers breached the systems of surveillance software maker Hacking Team.
The Flash Player vulnerability (CVE-2015-5119), related to the ActionScript 3 ByteArray class, allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable systems. Cybercriminals integrated the flaw into the Angler, Neutrino and Nuclear Pack exploit kits shortly after its existence came to light.
The vulnerability affects Flash Player 18.0.0.194 and earlier versions. Adobe patched the bug with the release of Flash Player 18.0.0.203.
An advisory from Adobe is not yet available, but the researcher known as Kafeine has confirmed for SecurityWeek that Flash Player 18.0.0.203 patches the zero-day. According to the expert, users who update their installations to the latest version are protected against attacks involving the aforementioned exploit kits.
Hacking Team has likely used this Flash Player zero-day to deploy its surveillance software on targeted systems. Proof-of-concept (PoC) code discovered in the leak describes the vulnerability as “the most beautiful Flash bug for the last four years since CVE-2010-2161.”
This isn’t the only zero-day exploit found in the Hacking Team leak. Researchers have also uncovered a less serious Windows kernel bug related to the open font type manager module provided by Adobe. Microsoft is working on a patch for this issue.
Attackers leaked a total of roughly 400GB of data allegedly obtained from Hacking Team’s systems, including emails, software, source code, and various types of documents. The exposed files appear to show that despite denials, the Italian spyware maker has been working with totalitarian countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Hacking Team has confirmed that its systems have been breached, but it has not commented on the authenticity of the leaked files. A member of the European Parliament wants the company to be investigated.
Update. Adobe has published its advisory for Flash Player 18.0.0.203. The update addresses a total of 36 vulnerabilities, including CVE-2015-5119.
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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