Pierluigi Paganini
October 26, 2016
Adobe has released a security update for its Flash Player that address a critical vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2016-7855, that has been exploiting in the wild by threat actors.
According to the security advisory issued by Adobe, the CVE-2016-7855 has been exploiting in targeted attacks. The vulnerability is a use-after-free issue that can be triggered by attackers for arbitrary code execution.
“Adobe has released security updates for Adobe Flash Player for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Chrome OS. These updates address a critical vulnerability that could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.” states the summary published by Adobe.
“Adobe is aware of a report that an exploit for CVE-2016-7855 exists in the wild, and is being used in limited, targeted attacks against users running Windows versions 7, 8.1 and 10.”
The CVE-2016-7855 flaw affects Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Chrome OS, Flash Player 23.0.0.185 and earlier, and 11.2.202.637 and earlier for Linux.
The vulnerability was discovered by the researchers Neel Mehta and Billy Leonard from the Google Threat Analysis Group.
The researchers confirmed the exploitation of the CVE-2016-7855 vulnerability in a few, targeted attacks against users running Windows 7, 8.1 and 10.
The security researchers at Adobe speculate the involvement of a sophisticated threat actor behind the targeted attacks that exploited the issue.
Adobe issued the Flash Player 23.0.0.205 and 11.2.202.643 (Linux).
Both Microsoft and Google are also expected to address the vulnerability by issuing updates for Chrome, Edge, and Internet Explorer 11.
Adobe software continues to be a privileged target of hackers, zero-day and security vulnerabilities affecting the products of the company have been exploited in numerous attacks in the wild.
[adrotate banner=”9″]
(Security Affairs – CVE-2016-7855, Adobe)
