Adobe Releases Security Advisory for Flash Player, Reader, and Acrobat

Adobe has released a security advisory to alert users of a vulnerability affecting the following products:

• Adobe Flash Player 10.2.152.33 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Solaris
• Adobe Flash Player 10.2.154.18 and earlier versions for Google Chrome users
• Adobe Flash Player 10.1.106.16 and earlier versions for Android
• 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.

Exploitation of this vulnerability may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial-of-service condition. At this time, the vendor has not released a fix for this vulnerability. The Adobe advisory indicates that this vulnerability is being actively exploited via a Flash (.swf) file embedded in a Microsoft Excel (.xls) file delivered as an email attachment.



Adobe has indicated that it expects to release a fix for this vulnerability during the week of March 21, 2011. In the interim, users and administrators are encouraged to implement the following workarounds to help reduce the risks.

• Disable Flash in the web browser as described in the Securing Your Web Browser document.
• Disable Flash and 3D & Multimedia support in Adobe Reader 9 and later.
• Disable JavaScript in Adobe Reader and Acrobat.
• Prevent Internet Explorer from automatically opening PDF documents.
• Disable the displaying of PDF documents in the web browser.
• Enable DEP in Microsoft Windows.
• Utilize Microsoft EMET to enable runtime mitgations for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Excel.

Additional information regarding this vulnerability, including detailed workaround instructions, can be found in US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#192052. US-CERT will provide additional information as it becomes available.