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Flash Vulnerabilities Affect Thousands of Sites
An anonymous reader sends us to The Register for this security news. The problem is compounded by the fact that some of the most popular Web development tools for generating SWF produce files containing the recently disclosed vulnerabilities. "Researchers from Google have documented serious vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash content which leave thousands of websites susceptible to attacks that steal the personal details of visitors. A web search reveals more than 500,000 vulnerable applets on major corporate, government and media sites. Removing the vulnerable content will require combing through website directories for SWF files and then testing them one by one. Updates in the Adobe software that renders SWF files in browsers are also likely, but they probably wouldn't quell the threat completely... No patch in sight from Adobe, that's the price to pay for depending on proprietary solutions."
I've never been a fan of flash, I prefer HTML, CSS and PHP.
Quoth the headline: "that's the price to pay for depending on proprietary solutions..."
There are open source implementations of the Flash protocol; I'm running Gnash as my SWF player on Ubuntu 64, and it works just fine. Your mileage may vary.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
...how does the fact that Flash is proprietary affect it's vulnerability? As in "that's the price you pay..."???
:)
I don't get that part.
But I am crossing my fingers that this will help move designers away from using it.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
Many of the Flash problems they found were in .swf files produced by third parties, and not the flagship Flash program.
It burns a lot of CPU time, uses a lot of bandwidth, crashes browsers, and - not for the first time - has serious security issues.
On Firefox, there's an extension called Flashblock. It blocks Flash by default, but allows you to re-enable it on a page-wide or applet-by-applet basis. Several other extensions will do the same thing.
In IE7, you can double-click a spot in the status bar (third box, right to left, of the boxes just to the left of the security zone indicator (the thing that usually says Internet)) or open the Add-on Manager from Tools in the command bar or menu bar, and disable or enable the Flash ActiveX control. This will globally enable or disable flash, but doesn't take effect on a given page until that page is refreshed. Alternatively, the third-party add-on IE7Pro has applet-by-applet flash blocking.
I realize that some sites need it, and on those there's nothing you can do about this problem except hope Adobe updates their software ASAP. For everywhere else though, do yourself a favor and block it.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Can we be slightly more trollish ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433
Funny, I've been using a permament workaround since way before these were discovered: don't install Flash. As a bonus, you get notified with a blank screen when vising a website with no useful content, so you don't waste any time trying to figure out how the hell to navigate it.
/. delives proprietary flash content to us via a proprietary ad network. Does that make /. evil too?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Why was the book released before the patch? "The vulnerabilities are laid out in the book Hacking Exposed Web 2.0: Web 2.0 Security Secrets and Solutions. It is due to hit store shelves soon, but is already in the hands of many security professionals. The book's authors, who work for penetration testing firm iSEC Partners as well as for Google, say a web search reveals more than 500,000 vulnerable applets on major corporate, government and media sites." "The authors have been working since the summer with Adobe, the developer of Flash, and the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team to coordinate a remedy. But so far there is no estimate when patches may be released. A security update Adobe released this week for its Flash player doesn't fix the vulnerabilities, Stamos said. Adobe representatives didn't reply to emails seeking comment."
I've RTFA and even the comments, and I still don't understand.
Heise points out that youtube FLV files are generated by youtube from other videos, but seems to leave open the possibility that FLV video files could be malicious in their own right on other sites. Clearly player programs could be malicious (or vulnerable) but what about the videos themselves?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Huh? So this is some kind of phishing attack? Exactly how is Flash involved, and what should we be watching out for? (Other than never entering important data into a form we reached by clicking... always good practice.)
With respect to the "No patch in sight from Adobe" part, of course. If such a flaw was discovered by security researchers in firefox, they could do better than merely report the problem, it is within their power to correct the code and issue a third party patch/update if mainstream won't act. The vulnerability may not intrinsically be due to the proprietary nature (though external code audits might arguably occur to help, but I wouldn't guarantee it), but solving those problems cannot be done in a proprietary system except by the vendor.
The community might ignore such a patch, and it might not even happen that often, but if things were generally dire enough in a projects mainstream, a new leadership could fork the project and that is not unheard of in projects. Of course, it's common for distributions to apply security updates to their packages before upstream merges them, so it isn't *that* strange.
Not related to security, but the current version of the flash plugin, for example, breaks compatibility with linux opera and konqueror due to Xembed, and packagers hands are kind of tied in terms of what to do about it. Of course, can also point out the ATI drivers, which suffer greatly from problems and are dealt with in a way that doesn't work.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You can say the same about Java, Javascript, Ruby, Python, browsers in general. Just revert back to using lynx I guess, but that had a remote hole as well! Actually 2 remove holes,
http://secunia.com/advisories/17372/
http://secunia.com/advisories/17216/
That is with just a text-only browser.
So, should we go back to using
echo -e "GET / HTTP/1.1\nHost: slashdot.org\n\n" | netcat slashdot.org 80
Kinda sucks!
Clearly one of the answers is to limit the browser to sub-user access. I think that is what Vista tells us is happening there. Debian doesn't do that by default. But then I'm not sure how easy it would be to limit iceweasel (firefox) to not executable stuff except known plugins, etc...
As for the solution to problems like this, it is clearly the client that needs patching!! A client needs to handle ALL cases without allowing someone to compromise information, etc.
There is a balance between security and usability. You can't have both perfect at the same time.
I am not a programmer, but it appears using proprietary closed architectures such as Flash/Shockwave might not be the wisest and most secure solution for an active browser plug-in.
.NET v1, v2, v3, v3.5, etc... and then utilize the proprietary Microsoft Silverlight plug-in? (And is it any better, safer, or more trustworthy?) http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/faq.aspx
(Or did the inventing source coders/programmers get 86ed following the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia and now Adobe can't put Humpty-Dumpty back together again?)
Are there any GPL'd Open Source browser plug-ins that can preform equivalent functionality to Flash/Shockwave?
Or... are we either left without, or to install
What of the non-Windows users who can't install ".NET Libraries"?
This is the very definition of "responsible disclosure". Because "responsible disclosure" is defined this way it must be responsible. You aren't going to argue with a definition are you?
Flash fails worse than the blink tag. It feels like a system hacked on top of a system of broken systems. It's the single most frustrating "feature" to hit the web since the blink tag. To me, flash can be used in one of three ways, in decreasing amounts of popularity:
1) It provides a mechanism for young impressionable web designers to splatter their so called design spunk all over my screen in one gigantic wank-off-fest. Usually, resulting in pages that are so unusably bad, I can't begin to fathom how they were even passed by a blind retarded monkey, which should have said "FUCK OFF, you dumb twat, get a new pair of eyeballs!'
2) It provides a mechanism for young impressionable web programmers to splatter their so called programming spunk all over my processor in a gigantic waste of cycles, providing a service that's been done before, and done better by other plugins, by other desktop apps, by other non-retards.
3) It provides a mechanism for a few savants to create brilliant web pages, and applications by a minimal, or appropriate application of flash, in a way that is visually appealing, technologically sound, and generally couldn't be done better by something else, popularly available.
I see the first all the time. I'm forced to endure the second often, whenever a "COOL VIDEO" comes from friends, on youtube, and the third, I rarely notice.... because good design with flash fades into the background.
Of course, I'm not going to lie: I'm biased, because flash sucks gigantic testicles on the Mac.
I need some example code. Uh, for my research.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
... i'm on an amiga.
It doesn't work many times, and it destabilizes the browser, often times causing it to crash on pages that don't even have flash on them.
What I got out of it is that the SWF does need to contain the vulnerability,
"SWF files generated by six of the more popular content development tools automatically contain the bugs, according to the book. Those programs include DreamWeaver, Connect, Breeze - which are sold by Adobe - and TechSmith Camtasia, InfoSoft FusionCharts and software from Autodemo."
And while I do not use any of those things, I would still like to know what exactly this bug is so I can avoid writing it. How about just letting us know if it's AS2, AS3, or both? Or is this more a "Buy my book!" kind of thing than an advisory?
since i dont use flash. flash sites. or even allow it to ever install. i dont think i will worry too much.
any site that requires flash. has a non-flash equivilant somewhere. screw flash. i don't feel i've missed anything important.
as an added bonus. i havent seen a blinking, moving, annoying sound making flash ad in years.
And now i find me and my data are more secure for not using ever allowing adobes bloated crud to touch my pc. nice. very nice.
From what little I can get from the article this seems like just another cross site scripting attack.
Although this can "help" an attacker steal information the end user still has to click a link provided by the attacker that tricks the user into thinking they are on someone elses site and seeing content that site generated.
Cross site scripting attacks are not to laughed off, but they do tend to get over exagerated. When is the last time you clicked on an email link sent to you out of the blue...and then stuck in your user name and password.
People could just as easily fall for attacks like this that don't even change the URL. Not to mention that this has to upload the payload to a server. Meaning you can steal people's information, but it has to go to an IP somewhere. Maybe if law enforcement would get off their behinds and go after this f'ers it wouldn't be such a big issue.
All the anti-flash posts need to get down voted. I could easily say that Jscript sucks because of all the various security issues it has had over the years, but it isn't useful or productive. Flash is what flash is...you don't like it...don't install it and shutup and let the rest of us use it.
To me, flash can be used in one of three ways, in decreasing amounts of popularity:
:)
Nice rant, but you seem to fail to realize that the web, and computer software in general, tend to fall in the same sort of categories. That's just the way it is. Don't forget Sturgeon's Revelation, "90 percent of everything is crud." (Though I believe this estimate to be conservative, and certainly the adjective chosen is much more polite than is usually quoted.)
I'd rather have the possibility of having those few brilliant Flash-based sites/RIAs than to NOT have that ability at all. If you don't like the show, change the channel.
In other words, get over it.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I don't know about windows, but on linux, whenever the flash plugin starts streaming a .flv file it is available as /tmp/FlashXXXXXX where the xs are some random letters. Just wait for the file to load completely, mv /tmp/Flash* ., profit. (no ??? involved).
My feelings about Flash are kind of mixed. On one hand, it's proprietary technology. Specifications have, at some point, been published, but I don't think they are current, and there certainly isn't a full-featured implementation from anyone other than Adobe. This is bad.
On the other hand, looking at what Flash does, and at other technologies that do these things, it seems to me that Flash is clearly technologically superior. I don't know how large the browser plugin is these days, but the one that used to come with Opera used to be very small, and yet provide features that web masters are trying to kludge together with AJAX and whatnot, and for which the W3C has come up with the gargantuan SVG, which has even more elephantine implementations. Flash is the clear winner here.
And then, of course, there is the misuse of Flash for things where Plain Old HTML would be much better. But then again, if Flash were a widely-implemented open standard (rather than a widely-implemented proprietary technology which yet leaves some users in the cold), perhaps such use wouldn't be _mis_use.
So, all in all, I think that Flash would be _great_ if it weren't proprietary...but the fact that it _is_ proprietary is a real obstacle.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
As to the question at hand, I don't know enough detail about the vulnerability myself, however note: Stamos said Adobe is likely to update its Flash Player so it does a better job of vetting code variables before executing SWF files. But he said interaction with third-party code is such a core part of the way Flash works that updates to the player would likely provide only a partial fix. So while I do not understand the technical details, those that do understand believe some sort of player-side sanity checks would be good to mitigate the consequences. In the open-source world, they would be able to construct a proof-of-concept publicly of a 'hardened' flash plugin that may avoid glaring mistakes. He does concede that while a player-side change could mitigate the exposure, the servers must recompile their end to be complete. Could they do it with Gnash? Maybe, if Gnash was even complete enough to even support the features that can be exploited here, which I don't know.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I really would like to hear details of the 'vulnerability' just so I can begin checking our code and performing an assessment of wether or not this is a credible and realistic threat to the security of our customers.
In the past, many vulnerabilities have been reported on the Flash player, but most of them follow a similar kind of theme - the rogue SWF file must be created with third party authoring tools, and or modified in a hex editor, in order to put the malicious code in there to begin with. In addition, due to the security sandbox and crossdomain restrictions, it needs to be downloaded from your site anyway. So, its perfectly possible for a SWF to wreak havoc on a user's machine, the only caveat is that someone within a company, with access to the web servers and source code, would need to have created it in the first place - something I'm sure is indicative of a larger problem!
Oddly, most non Flash/web developers tend not to see it that way - I have a beautiful MP3 of a conversation I had with one of our 'Security' people who just consistently ranted on about undisclosed vulnerabilities as a reason not to use Flash in a project.
In my years of working with the web and the Flash platform, I have not yet seen a single workable exploit that could present a credible threat to the majority of Flash user's on the web, not without the user or the site already being compromised in some manner.
The only somewhat grey area is where Flash is used for online advertising, but you will find that most of the main publishers out there are aware of this and perform some level of code review on ads before they go live - I work for a bank and we don't run any 3rd party adverts without seeing the sourcecode and decompiling any SWF assets provided.
Really guys, the Flash platform isn't the cloud of evil you are making it out to be. Granted, it has been used for some really annoying things in the past, but used right, it can really help to deliver a friendly, usable and engaging user experience. In addition, in Adobe's hands we have seen it become more open than ever before - Flex, AMF, Tamarin, all released as open source in the past year. I'd be surprised if this trend does not continue.
Which is just one site that does things in Flash that I certainly _do_ find useful...
My Journal
Sadly, there are enormous amounts of money being made with these annoying, ugly, blinking Flash websites and layer-ads, (mainly) because of the enormous amount of stupidity of designers and their clients. Unfortunately, blinking ads and websites do work, and they attract way more users (i.e. possible customers) than well-designed and appropriately built sites.
;-)
If Flash would be erased, the industry would come up with just another technology to drive sophisticated users nuts. So the only way to deal with this is to gain control over the force of ad-blocking and Flash-blocking contraptions, and if you ever encounter some jerk giving a webapp "more 'boost', a bit of 'zoom' and a little extra 'swoosh'", tell him why everything he's doing is wrong and encourage him to make it better. I'm doing this all the time and I think I may have achieved some progress. There's a better web ahead, and I bet it even can include Flash
condom of the digital age?
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Aside from security and open-sourcedness, most Flash is just plain ugly.
On Linux, I never installed the plugin. On Mac, I have flashblock. And I'm happy.
What am I missing? So much Flash content reminds me of the old popup world
It's the advertisers who are unhappy. Recently CNN has retaliated by refusing to show news video clips because I have flashblock. I never liked suffering through its ads anyway.
One major issue with Flash is its ability to insert scripts into the actual page.
Say I want to read your email. I send you an email with a Flash animation in it. You read it and your webmail verifies there's no dangerous scripts in my email - but it's much harder to verify my Flash I sent you is safe. Which I'm counting on because I've put code in that creates a script tag in the webpage, downloads my dangerous script, and sends me your cookies. Now I can read your email.
Flash has been getting a free pass on security for a long time. Time for things to tighten up on the web viewer more widely installed than Internet Explorer.
I find it odd that the Register article appears under a flash banner and has a flash ad floated inside the content. All this in an article "exposing" the vulnerabilities of flash (swf).
Neither is Flash.
Both needs a plugins to work.
The HUGE difference comes from the fact that Flash is only available from 1 single company which produce plugins for only a small handful of platform (except maybe for the open-source Gnash plugin, which already kind of works, but still needs a lot of efforts).
Whereas, MPEG player are available for whatever platform you may think about as long as it has either the processors horsepower or a decoding co-processor. Including your basic 32-bit Windows, but also Linux running on 64bits Sparc or Itanium, PalmOS powered PDA, GSM phones, MP3 players, Less popular or Obscure OSes (Syllable, Haiku, etc.), Console as old as DreamCast (software) or even PlayStation and Saturn (hardware), etc.rr
The only problem is that, given the huge amount of players, some are more crappy than others. And often, pre-assembled computer when bought in big shops comes with a lot of crappy software installed.
But then you have the same problem with Flash with thousand of Flash video player, some much more ugly and inefficient than others. It only shifts the problem of having a good player from the user to the website designer.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In addition to what other /.ers have said, I may also point out savetube.com.
You paste-in the youtube page url, hit the button and get an URL you can either save or copy/paste into some compatible player like VLC.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You forgot #4. Flash content can be created for off-line use. I make a very comfortable living designing tutorials and simulations in Flash that are self contained and thus aren't exposed to these supposed vulnerabilities.
I'm so tired of Flash rants I could puke a big steaming puddle of CSS. Flash is bad because bad designers use it to make bad websites...yet bad designers make crappy HTML sites all the time. Flash is bad because it crashes the browser...yet Java (or whatever the latest buggy cross-platform solution of the moment is) is the second coming despite it's chronic habit of doing the same thing. Flash is bad because it's proprietary...except that it isn't: the SWF file format was open-sourced a long time ago. Flash is bad because it isn't search engine friendly...yet one of the most popular websites in the world used it to reinvent how we experience video on the web. SVG is better, for reasons only geeks can appreciate...but no one supports it, so who cares?
In my opinion, every web technology sucks pretty mightily, for one reason or another. They are either abused by malevolent advertisers or 13 year olds, not supported uniformly by all platforms or browsers, and are a pain in the ass to design with. Dynamic HTML is a bad joke. Javascript invented pop-up hell. And praise CSS all you like, it's a strategy only a programmer could love. You can't center things reliably with it no matter how many hoops you jump through. That's something even HTML 1.0 could manage.
My own clients LOVE Flash sites. They insist on them. They want animations, and sound, and websites that look the same in every browser. (Flash's ability to proportionately scale content to the window is a thing of beauty, and one of the most underused talents of the plug-in. Why some Flash designers insist on manipulating the window size instead is beyond me) The only people who don't love Flash sites are other programmers. And I'm more than happy to take their business.
Hating Flash for bad Flash sites is like hating scientists for making gunpowder possible. Live in a teepee or run a casino...your choice.
I believe most Flash is done wrong simply because the site designers value form over content.
Useful or pertinent information (if it is manifest at all) usually has the appearance of being inserted as an afterthought. That's why the sites I visit most often tend to be based primarily on simple markup such as HTML, which despite its various drawbacks is at least easy to maintain (and therefore more likely to be maintained), and does not have the noli-me-tangere character of a cast-bronze SWF presentation.
I apologise for coming across as a luddite, but it is distinctly tiresome to be subject to the whim of some mentally adolescent graphics designer poking glitzy, time-consuming displays in my eye rather than allowing the information I'm looking for to be easily found. Which is why I think Flashblock is the best thing since unsliced bread.
Hey, Rezmason here.
I agree that Flash is often misused, but I never thought I'd see such an overwhelmingly negative reaction to a Flash vulnerability. Flash gets updated relatively frequently, alright? It's kind of troublesome to read a "that's what you get" kind of statement on the front page of this site, especially if the writer isn't exactly in the loop.
Besides, there's a silver lining on this cloud. The more professional Flash websites will be quicker to address this vulnerability, whereas the ones that have been thrown together will make for bigger targets. Maybe this will motivate employers to hire Flash devs who really know what they're doing. After all, with Flash's scripting capabilities, developing in it for a client should be a serious matter based on trust.
And finally, despite its closed nature, Flash has (I believe) an installer base about the size of the number of computers that comprise the Internet. And it's proprietary, and has been from the start, even though it's opening up more every day. And it's got enough tricks up its sleeve to empower THIS creative professional. Ubiquitous, powerful, and CLOSED, that's right. If that makes you uncomfortable, please turn it off. But for pete's sake, don't rail on it.
Normally I'd agree with you - but everything about Flash is WRONG. :)
Preach it!
You're a little late to the party though. We cynics already use Firefox and put on AdBlock Plus, AdBlock Filterset Updater, NoScript and Flashblock. I'm on Linux, using an encrypted partition, connected to my firewall through a VPN. No, I'm not really paranoid, I've just decided that it is easier to be careful up front than try to keep up with the latest round of vulnerabilities.
Back in my day when we chiseled our bits into stone and sent them by mule train from village to village...
Sure seems like the most secure option for the BBC would have been sticking with their first decision, which was supporting Windows Media formats.
Now they have just helped promote a very buggy and vulnerable standard. Good job, FOSSies! Seems you guys don't value security as much as you pretend.
There are some OS implementations but there's no flash RFC or anything of that nature. It's all reverse-engineering, and everytime Adobe releases a new version, the OS code is out of date.
And Gnash doesn't work fine everywhere, because the devs don't really care. Check this out:
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119765675010299&w=2
It seems to me that the host can also keep you from turning off flash with a limited, uh, right-click interface. When I have something moving around when I am trying to read there is no way to stop it. For me, this is a showstopper.
that's the price to pay for depending on proprietary solutions.
And the open-source replacement for Flash would be...?
I have no love for Flash, but the sky is blue in the world where I live.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
> The more professional Flash websites will be quicker to address this vulnerability,
> whereas the ones that have been thrown together will make for bigger targets. Maybe this
> will motivate employers to hire Flash devs who really know what they're doing. After all,
> with Flash's scripting capabilities, developing in it for a client should be a serious
> matter based on trust.
WRONG; do NOT trust ANY web site.
So the "good guys" clean up their *.swf files. *WHAT ABOUT THE BAD GUYS*??? And please don't feed me that "don't go to untrustworthy websites" crap.
- Can you claim that you've never ever mistyped a URL and landed on a typosquatter's site?
- Are you sure that your ISP's DNS-server is 100% immune to cache-corruption? With pharming attacks, *EVEN IF YOU TYPE IN THE URL EXACTLY CORRECT* you will still get diverted to a malicious site.
- Do you only visit websites that don't have any 3rd-party banner ads? One of the current favourite attack methods is to insert malicious code in ad-servers that many mainstream sites use.
- Can you be absolutely certain that your favourite "trusted website" won't be compromised like the Superbowl teams' websites in Jan/Feb of 2007?
Almost exactly 2 years ago, MS WIndows was hit with the WMF exploit. They got a lot of flack when they said they wouldn't send out a fix until "Patch Tuesday". So they sent out quick fix before "Patch Tuesday". Meanwhile, Adobe isn't merely saying they'll have a patch out 2 weeks from this coming Tuesday. It's more like "no patch in site". I didn't give MS a free pass on the WMF vulnerability, and I don't think Adobe deserves any slack here. Another reason I'm more concerned is because my home PC, running linux was immune to the WMF vulnerability, but is subject to the Schlockwave Trash vulnerability.
DIE SCHLOCKWAVE TRASH, DIE.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
The 32-bit Flash player works on many 64-bit Linux distros. It works with both Firefox and Konqueror on my 64-bit Gentoo system.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
In straight HTML with CSS can you...
Draw a line at any orientation other than the horizontal or vertical?
Draw a circle or any other curve?
Create a drop shadow?
Perform a gausian blur?
Embed a font?
Upload a file without a page reload?
Track the percentage of that file that has been uploaded?
WRITE THE APPLICATION ONCE AND KNOW IT WILL WORK ON ANY BROWSER?
Flash exists because HTML 2 / CSS 2.1 / Javascript sucks. It's that simple.
NO, at least I don't like Youtube. Shitty quality at best. And the player sucks.
I enjoy the videos in stage6. Fantastic quality, the player will let me see the videos fullscreen with hardware acceleration and they can be easily downloaded.
http://www.stage6.com/
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
some more information at http://blog.superkrut.se/?p=17