On the same day that it plans to release a patch for a critical flaw in Shockwave, Adobe confirmed on Thursday morning that there is a newly discovered bug in Flash that is being actively exploited already in attacks against Reader. The vulnerability affects Flash on all of the relevant platforms, including Android, as well as Reader on Windows and Mac, and won’t be patched for nearly two weeks.
The new Flash bug came to light early Thursday when a researcher posted information about the problem, as well as a Trojan that is exploiting it and dropping a pair of malicious files on vulnerable PCs. Researcher Mila Parkour tested the bug and posted a screenshot of the malicious files that a Trojan exploiting the vulnerability drops during its infection routine. Adobe has since confirmed the vulnerability and said that it is aware of the attacks against Reader.
“A
critical
vulnerability has been identified
in Flash Player 10.1.85.3 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh,
Linux and Solaris; Adobe Flash Player 10.1.95.2 and earlier versions for
Android; and the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader
9.4 and earlier 9.x versions for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX, and Adobe
Acrobat 9.4 and earlier 9.x versions for Windows
and Macintosh. This vulnerability (CVE-2010-3654) could cause a crash
and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected
system,” Adobe said.
This flaw is the latest is a string of bugs that have cropped up in Adobe products in the last few months. There have been a number of critical flaws exposed in Flash, Reader and other Adobe software, including one in the company’s Shockwave application, which it is patching on Thursday. The Shockwave flaw is remotely exploitable and the details of it have been known publicly for some time.
Adobe security officials said they plan to patch the Flash bug on Nov. 9 and will release a fix for Reader and Acrobat during the week of Nov. 15.
