By ANDREW GRIFFIN
Wednesday 08 July 2015
Adobe Flash, a program that is installed on more than 1
billion computers, has a serious vulnerability that could let
anyone take over it.
The huge weakness was revealed as part of documents
leaked after a cyberattack on Hacking Team, a government-
sponsored spying group, that seems to have been using it to
break into computers. There is no patch available to fix the
problem — though Adobe has said it will provide one today
— and so the safest way to ensure that computers aren’t
vulnerable is to delete the application entirely.
“Successful exploitation could cause a crash and potentially
allow an attacker to take control of the affected system,”
according to a statement from Adobe. The problem affects
Windows, Mac and Linux computers.
Since the vulnerability has now been detailed in public
documents, following the hack, anyone can use it against
any computer running the application. Some experts have
shown how the vulnerability could be used to take control of
computers and run files on them — exposing all of the
information stored there as well as potentially making them
available for immoral or illegal use.
The flaw comes from a hole in the Flash code that attackers
can use to read and write information onto a computer.
Once they have done that they can send instructions to the
computer, which will then execute it.
Hacking Team described the vulnerability as "the most
beautiful Flash bug for the last four years", according to
leaked documents.
The organisation, a cybersecurity firm that sells its tools and
services to governments, was hacked earlier this week. The
leaked files were distributed over the internet — and
seemed to indicate that the group had been selling its tools
and services to oppressive regimes.
www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/huge-adobe-flash-security-vulnerability-revealed-after-hacking-groups-documents-leaked-10374804.html

Just in case...

Following

Not good