Kaspersky Lab Finds Flash Vulnerability Through Microsoft Word

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Neowin: Kaspersky Lab, which has been under fire by the U.S. government as possibly being an agent of the Russian government and spying on U.S. computers, has found a previously unknown bug in Adobe Flash that was apparently exploited by a hacker group on October 10. Adobe issued a patch to fix the bug today. According to Kaspersky, "the exploit is delivered through a Microsoft Word document and deploys the FinSpy commercial malware." The company worked with Adobe to get a patch ready as quickly as possible, with Adobe releasing it a few hours ago. Users and agencies running the following versions of Adobe Flash will need to update immediately, as the vulnerability has been labeled as critical. The patch updates all versions of Adobe Flash to version 27.0.0.170.

What?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those Russian basta... Oh, um, well, thank you for pointing out this vulnerability.

Re:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Those Russian basta... Oh, um, well, thank you for pointing out this vulnerability.

Now that the US is pressuring people to dump their product, they should only tell their customers - at least for a week or two - when they find big new threat like this.

Want the warnings in a timely fashion? Pay up! B-)

Re:

[chainsaw1]

Stuff like this has limited value due to the delivery mechanism, particularly when your thinking at the level of "by a nation-state against a nation -state". It would feasibly be worthwhile to let the small stuff go through to build reputation while not disclosing larger / more widespread / network direct access exploits.

I'm not saying anyone is innocent or guilty, just that something like this does not disprove any of the investigations.

Re:

[jbengt]

Well, TFA said that the vulnerability was discovered by McAfee, so it probably has something to do with hookers and designer drugs, rather than Russians.

Re:

[Gr8Apes]

I saw no such thing. But, this begs the question of who runs flash these days?

Re: Usual non-info + lies

[F.Ultra]

Unknown means unknown to the public and the vendor.

Re:

[F.Ultra]

The vendor of course here refers to Adobe and not Kaspersky.

So it's either a good week for the NSA

[Anonymous Coward]

or a bad one , either all their backdoors are being closed or they have a completely different set and all their rivals are being closed out.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You presume there is just one TLA that does this. That is an incorrect assumption.

Re:

[infolation]

Isn't 'flash' itself an infection? And I am wondering whether it has any purpose now, in 2017.

Translation: trying to pretend it's new

[WillAffleckUW]

They want you to be vulnerable.

vCenter

[Anonymous Coward]

Any updates from vmware or adobe how to use vCener client with latest version without crashing it ?

Re:

[alvinrod]

It's not that hard to believe to start with and after all of the information that came out about Russia's olympic team and the government essentially controlling their anti-doping program so that it became a pro-doping program it doesn't seem unlikely at all that the government has its fingers in places where it shouldn't and doesn't wish them seen.

I don't know whether the Russian government is heavily involved with the company and has them doing anything that can't be admitted publicly, and it's entirel

Re:

[lhowaf]

So, you're betting there's a high probability of the Russian government having no non-public involvement with Kaspersky?
I guess I'm in.

And vSphere administrators everywhere....

[tk77]

all cried out in frustration when the vCenter web client stopped working today due to flash suddenly crashing due to an automatic update.... and then further frustrated by the fact they'd have to manually drop back to the vulnerable 27.0.0.159 to actually administer their servers.

Screw you Adobe. And screw you VMware for still only having a partially implemented HTML5 interface.

Re:

[tk77]

They do have a "partially implemented" HTML5 console but it doesn't currently support all of the features of the main web console which unfortunately, still requires flash.

moral of the story?

[deviated_prevert]

DON'T link word documents to flash content or create .docx with flash content or trust the idiots who do! It is the same thing as pissing in a sand box and then wondering why your clothes stink.

So the question is ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

When did it find it?

Who it shared this knowledge with so far?

Why go public now?

Re:

[WoodstockJeff]

> Why go public now?

Because Flash hasn't had a critical vulnerability reported in almost a week, so it was overdue.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

I think the better question is : have you seen any evidence whatsoever that Kaspersky is anything but what they have always represented* or are you just jumping on the "Russian Hackers! Trump is Illegitimate!" bandwagon?

Please link evidence any you've seen - I've apparently missed the entirety of it.

* Russian hackers straddling the white/greyhat line, selling an AV product based on that position.

Shocking!

[PPH]

To see that people are still using Flash.

The KGB connected "AV" software?

[modmans2ndcoming]

Lol.... Who would run that shit on their PC?

Re:

[Antiocheian]

Anyone who isn't OK being infested by the likes of Stuxnet.

Uninstall Flash.

[Gravis Zero]

If you still have a Flash plugin installed then now is the proper time to uninstall it.