Lucian Constantin
CSO Senior Writer

One week after patch, Flash vulnerability already exploited in large-scale attacks

news
Oct 21, 20142 mins

The Fiesta exploit kit bundles an exploit for the CVE-2014-0569 vulnerability in Flash Player, researchers found

If you haven’t updated your Flash Player with the fixes released on Oct. 14, you may be vulnerable to new attacks using a commercial exploit kit called Fiesta, security researchers warn.

The vulnerability, which is being tracked as CVE-2014-0569 in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database, was fixed in Flash Player updates last week.

The bundling of an exploit for CVE-2014-0569 in an attack tool that’s sold on underground markets is unusual, especially since the vulnerability was privately reported to Adobe through Hewlett-Packard’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) program, meaning its details should not be public.

The creators of exploit kits like Fiesta typically reuse proof-of-concept exploits published online by researchers or included in legitimate penetration testing tools like Metasploit. That’s because reverse engineering patches to discover where vulnerabilities are located and then writing reliable exploits for them requires advanced knowledge and is generally done by professionals.

The use of custom, non-public exploits is much more common in targeted cyber espionage campaigns than in mass-scale drive-by download attacks that favor a catch-all approach and are typical to attackers using commercial exploit kits.

The use of a CVE-2014-0569 exploit in a Fiesta-powered attack was first spotted by an independent malware researcher known online as Kafeine. Initially he believed the exploit targeted a Flash vulnerability called CVE-2014-0556 that was patched in September, but Timo Hirvonen, a researcher at F-Secure, later determined it actually attacked the much newer flaw.

Kafeine expressed surprise that a CVE-2014-0569 exploit landed in Fiesta so quickly. Either the author has some really skilled contacts or someone might have been induced by money to break a non-disclosure agreement, he said in a blog post.

Regardless of where the exploit came from, users who have not yet installed the latest Flash Player updates should do so as soon as possible; especially companies, where automatic updates are typically disabled and the patch deployment process takes longer.

Windows and Mac users should update to Flash Player 15.0.0.189, or 13.0.0.250 if they’re using the extended support release. Users of Flash Player on Linux should upgrade to version 11.2.202.411. The Flash Player plug-ins bundled with Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 10 and Internet Explorer 11 will receive patches though the update mechanisms of those browsers.

Adobe also released updates for its AIR application runtime and software development kit (SDK), since the program bundles Flash Player.

Lucian Constantin

Lucian Constantin writes about information security, privacy, and data protection for CSO. Before joining CSO in 2019, Lucian was a freelance writer for VICE Motherboard, Security Boulevard, Forbes, and The New Stack. Earlier in his career, he was an information security correspondent for the IDG News Service and Information security news editor for Softpedia.

Before he became a journalist, Lucian worked as a system and network administrator. He enjoys attending security conferences and delving into interesting research papers. He lives and works in Romania.

You can reach him at lucian_constantin@foundryco.com or @lconstantin on X. For encrypted email, his PGP key's fingerprint is: 7A66 4901 5CDA 844E 8C6D 04D5 2BB4 6332 FC52 6D42

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