CVE-2018-4878 — Red Hat
HIGHCVE-2018-4878 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) Use After Free vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03) and has been used in ransomware campaigns — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
A use-after-free vulnerability was discovered in Adobe Flash Player before 28.0.0.161. This vulnerability occurs due to a dangling pointer in the Primetime SDK related to media player…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2021-11-03 — including use in ransomware campaigns. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-05-03.
- 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-2018-4878.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2018-4878 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 395,308 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
A use-after-free vulnerability was discovered in Adobe Flash Player before 28.0.0.161. This vulnerability occurs due to a dangling pointer in the Primetime SDK related to media player handling of listener objects. A successful attack can lead to arbitrary code execution. This was exploited in the wild in January and February 2018.
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.
Flash ActiveX 28.0.0.137 - Code Execution (1)
by smgorelik · Feb 16, 2016
Adobe Flash < 28.0.0.161 - Use-After-Free
by SyFi · Apr 6, 2018
Flash ActiveX 28.0.0.137 - Code Execution (2)
by smgorelik · Feb 13, 2016
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-2018-4878 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 6 Supplementary | flash-plugin-0:28.0.0.161-1.el6_9 | RHSA-2018:0285 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2018-4878 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.