CISA Warns of Actively Exploited Adobe Flash Player Vulnerabilities
In a move that underscores the persistent threat of legacy software vulnerabilities, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added four critical Adobe Flash Player flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. Despite Adobe Flash Player reaching its end-of-life in December 2020, these vulnerabilities, some dating back to 2013, are actively being exploited in the wild.
Once a cornerstone of interactive web content, Adobe Flash Player has become a notorious security risk, plagued by a history of zero-day exploits and drive-by download attacks. The vulnerabilities added to the KEV catalog include:
- CVE-2013-0643 & CVE-2013-0648: These critical code execution flaws were previously leveraged in targeted attacks against Firefox users.
- CVE-2014-0497 & CVE-2014-0502: These severe integer underflow and double-free vulnerabilities were also exploited in zero-day attacks.
The continued exploitation of these vulnerabilities, even years after Flash’s demise, highlights the danger of outdated software. Attackers often target legacy systems, knowing they may harbor unpatched vulnerabilities that provide easy access to networks.
CISA is urging all federal agencies to eliminate the use of Adobe Flash Player from their networks by October 8, 2024. This directive is crucial to mitigate the risk of active threats that could compromise sensitive government data and disrupt critical operations.
Adobe officially discontinued Flash Player in 2020, and major browsers have dropped support. While Flash may have once played a vital role in the internet’s evolution, its security risks have rendered it obsolete.
