CVE-2016-7855 — Microsoft
HIGHCVE-2016-7855 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) Use After Free vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Use-after-free vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player before 23.0.0.205 on Windows and OS X and before 11.2.202.643 on Linux allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via unspecified…
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-2016-7855.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2016-7855 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 10–50% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
Use-after-free vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player before 23.0.0.205 on Windows and OS X and before 11.2.202.643 on Linux allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via unspecified vectors, as exploited in the wild in October 2016.
Affected Products
flash playeradobeenterprise linux desktopredhatenterprise linux serverredhatenterprise linux workstationredhatResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2016-7855 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Constrain what reaches the vulnerable code: limit the size and shape of untrusted input, isolate the affected component in a sandboxed or least-privileged process, and enable the platform's memory-safety mitigations (ASLR, stack protector, hardened allocator) so an out-of-bounds access is more likely to fail closed than to be exploitable.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Supplementary | flash-plugin-0:11.2.202.643-1.el5_11 | RHSA-2016:2119 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2016-7855 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.