Vulnerabilities Discovered in Adobe Flash Player Plugin Allow Potential Attackers to Send Arbitrary HTTP Requests from Users' Browsers, Warns Vulnerability Management Company Rapid7
Rapid7 Reports Two Adobe Flash Vulnerabilities That Can Be Exploited with Specific Browser/Operating System Combinations and Potentially Used to Perform Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) Attacks
Boston - October 17, 2006 - Two vulnerabilities found in Adobe Flash Player provide opportunity to attackers to send arbitrary HTTP requests from an unsuspecting user’s browser, reports Rapid7 LLC in a security advisory published today (see Rapid7 Advisory R7-0026: HTTP Header Injection Vulnerabilities in the Flash Player Plugin). These vulnerabilities could be used in concert with cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities to steal cookies or other private information. Adobe Flash Player version 9.0.16 for Windows and version 7.0.63 for Linux, as well as earlier versions, are affected.
The exploits can be carried out through the vulnerabilities when Flash is used with the following browser/operating system combinations:
- Internet Explorer (IE) 6 Service Pack 2 (IE 6, Security Version 1) for Windows (with Flash 9.0.16)
- Firefox 1.5.0.6 for Windows (with Flash 9.0.16)
- Firefox 1.5.0.6 for Linux (with Flash 7.0.63)
The two vulnerabilities reported are as follows:
XML.addRequestHeader() Vulnerability
The addRequestHeader() method insufficiently secures itself, providing a way around a security restriction that does not permit developers to use addRequestHeader() to set headers such as Host, Referer or Content-Length. As a result, it is possible to inject arbitrary headers with HTTP requests. The Rapid7 security paper points out that this vulnerability is similar to other, previously-reported vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash 7 and 8.
XML.contentType Vulnerability
The XML.contentType attribute contains the same vulnerability found in the addRequestHeader() and it can be exploited in the same way because Adobe Flash does not check the validity of the attribute’s value before building the HTTP request.
According to Rapid7, Adobe was notified of the vulnerabilities but has not yet released a fix or upgrade to Adobe Flash Player. To protect from the risk of attack, Rapid7 offers four solutions in the interim:
- Upgrade to the beta version (Flash Player 9.0.18d60 for Windows), which is fixed;
- Only allow trusted Websites to use Flash;
- Use alternative Flash Plugins (GplFlash, Gnash); or
- Uninstall Adobe Flash Player.
According to Adobe, there are 700 million Adobe Flash users worldwide (source: labs.adobe.com).
To protect its customers, Rapid7 has added data on these two vulnerabilities to security checks performed by NeXpose, its enterprise network vulnerability management solution.
About NeXpose
Rapid7's award-winning NeXpose Unified Vulnerability Management (UVM) product is an all-in-one security solution that scans Web servers, Web applications, databases and networks to locate threats, assess their risk to the environment and devise a remediation plan. NeXpose incorporates an expert system to build a knowledge base of facts on the environment it explores and model potential targeted attacks to expose all existing threats. NeXpose provides robust reporting capabilities that ensure compliance with governmental regulations, corporate security configuration policies, and the PCI Data Security Standard. NeXpose is available as an appliance, downloadable software or an On-Demand hosted solution.
About Rapid7
Rapid7 is a leader in vulnerability management and compliance, delivering a single unified solution across an organization's entire infrastructure. Rapid7's NeXpose is the only solution that includes support for web applications, databases, operating systems, and network devices in a single system. NeXpose uncovers "hidden" threats that other systems cannot find, while at the same time separating these real threats from excessive “false positive” noise common to most vulnerability management systems. Organizations, including Black & Decker, Trader Joe's, Florida State University, the New York Times, and the City of Philadelphia, continually rely on Rapid7 to mitigate risk and remain compliant. Rapid7 is headquartered in Boston, MA, with an office in Los Angeles, California.