Security → Security Advisory:Adobe Flash Player/Reader/Acrobat

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March 14, 2011 - Adobe PSIRT
Security Advisory for Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Acrobat (APSA11-01)

A Security Advisory (APSA11-01) has been posted in regards to an issue in Adobe Flash Player (CVE-2011-0609). A critical vulnerability exists in Adobe Flash Player 10.2.152.33 and earlier versions (Adobe Flash Player 10.2.154.13 and earlier for Chrome users) for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems, Adobe Flash Player 101.106.16 and earlier versions for Android, and the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat X (10.0.1) and earlier 10.x and 9.x versions for Windows and Macintosh operating systems. There are reports that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks via a Flash (.swf) file embedded in a Microsoft Excel (.xls) file delivered as an email attachment. At this time, Adobe is not aware of attacks targeting Adobe Reader and Acrobat.

We are in the process of finalizing a fix for the issue and expect to make available an update for Flash Player 10.x and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris and Android, and an update for Adobe Acrobat X (10.0.1) and earlier 10.x and 9.x versions for Windows and Macintosh, Adobe Reader X (10.0.1) for Macintosh, and Adobe Reader 9.4.2 and earlier 9.x versions during the week of March 21, 2011.

Because Adobe Reader X Protected Mode would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing, we are currently planning to address this issue in Adobe Reader X for Windows with the next quarterly security update for Adobe Reader, currently scheduled for June 14, 2011.

We will continue to provide updates on this issue via the Security Advisory section of the Adobe website as well as the Adobe PSIRT blog.

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Let me provide some additional background on the decision not to update Adobe Reader X at this time. We evaluated a number of different options. In the end, we determined that the above patch schedule would allow us to provide the best balance of risk mitigation and admin/update costs for our customers. Here are some points we considered in developing this schedule:

• Reports that we’ve received thus far indicate the attack is targeted at a very small number of organizations and limited in scope. The current attack leverages a malicious Flash (.swf) file inside a Microsoft Excel (.xls) file. The .xls file is used to set up machine memory to take advantage of a crash triggered by the corrupted .swf file. The final step of the attack is to install persistent malware on the victim’s machine.

• We have not received reports or malicious samples of attacks leveraging this vulnerability via .pdf files. However, attackers have leveraged these type of Flash Player vulnerabilities in the past via .pdf files to attack the embedded authplay.dll component shipping with Adobe Reader and Acrobat v9. Out of a preponderance of caution we took the decision to ship out-of-cycle updates for Adobe Reader and Acrobat v9, and Acrobat X to mitigate the risk of attackers shifting the attack from an .xls container to a .pdf container.

• Adobe Reader X Protected Mode (aka “sandboxing”) is designed to prevent the type of exploit we are currently seeing in the .swf/.xls attack from executing. Even if an attacker made the transition to a .pdf container for the exploit, the sandbox would prevent the final step of malicious software installation on the victim’s machine.

• We considered providing an out-of-cycle update for Adobe Reader X as well, which would have delayed the current patch release schedule by about another week. However, given the mitigation provided by the Adobe Reader X sandbox and the absence of attacks via PDF, we determined that an out-of-cycle update would incur unnecessary churn and patch management overhead on our users not justified by the associated risk, in particular for customers with large managed environments.
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