CVE-2012-1535 — Flash Player
HIGHCVE-2012-1535 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in adobe flash player. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Unspecified vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player before 11.3.300.271 on Windows and Mac OS X and before 11.2.202.238 on Linux allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-03. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-03-24.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2012-1535.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2012-1535 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
Unspecified vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player before 11.3.300.271 on Windows and Mac OS X and before 11.2.202.238 on Linux allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (application crash) via crafted SWF content, as exploited in the wild in August 2012 with SWF content in a Word document.
Affected Products
flash playeradobeopensuseopensuseenterprise linux desktopredhatenterprise linux serverredhatenterprise linux workstationredhatlinux enterprise desktopsuseResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Adobe Flash Player 11.3 - Font Parsing Code Execution (Metasploit)
by Metasploit · Aug 20, 2012
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every adobe flash player deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Fix
Apply the adobe flash player security patch or hotfix for CVE-2012-1535 on the affected version, following the vendor advisory for your exact build.
Workarounds
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Supplementary for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 | flash-plugin-0:11.2.202.238-1.el5 | RHSA-2012:1203 |
| Supplementary for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | flash-plugin-0:11.2.202.238-1.el6 | RHSA-2012:1173 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2012-1535 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.