Hackers exploit unpatched Flash Player vulnerability, Adobe warns

Adobe Systems is working on a patch for a critical vulnerability in Flash Player that hackers are already exploiting in attacks. In the meantime, the company has released other security patches for Reader, Acrobat, and ColdFusion.

The Flash Player vulnerability is being tracked as CVE-2016-4117 and affects Flash Player versions 21.0.0.226 and earlier for Windows, OS X, Linux, and Chrome OS. Successful exploitation can allow attackers to take control of affected systems.

“Adobe is aware of a report that an exploit for CVE-2016-4117 exists in the wild,” the company said in an advisory published Tuesday. “Adobe will address this vulnerability in our monthly security update, which will be available as early as May 12.”

Also Tuesday, Adobe released updates for Reader and Acrobat that fix 92 vulnerabilities, the majority of which are rated critical and can result in arbitrary code execution.

The affected versions include Acrobat DC and Reader DC 15.010.20060 and earlier versions, 15.006.30121 and earlier versions, as well as Acrobat XI and Reader XI 11.0.15 and earlier versions. Users can update their product installations manually by choosing Help > Check for Updates.

Adobe also released updates for its ColdFusion application server. These updates address an input validation issue that could lead to cross-site scripting attacks, a host name verification problem affecting wild card certificates, and a Java deserialization vulnerability in the Apache Commons Collections library.

Adobe advises users to install ColdFusion (2016 release) Update 1, ColdFusion 11 Update 8, or ColdFusion 10 Update 19, depending on which version they use.

ColdFusion installations are sometimes targeted by attackers. In 2013, researchers documented an attack where hackers exploited a ColdFusion vulnerability to install malware on Microsoft IIS servers.