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CVE-2015-5119: Adobe Flash Player Use-After-Free Vulnerability

CVE-2015-5119 is rated critical with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 and affects Adobe Flash Player, along with 10 other products in NVD’s configuration data. Per its scoring, it can be exploited over the network, without authentication, without any user interaction. The scored impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability is the highest available. CISA added it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-03, which means exploitation in the wild has been observed.

Vulnerability description

Use-after-free vulnerability in the ByteArray class in the ActionScript 3 (AS3) implementation in Adobe Flash Player 13.x through 13.0.0.296 and 14.x through 18.0.0.194 on Windows and OS X and 11.x through 11.2.202.468 on Linux allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (memory corruption) via crafted Flash content that overrides a valueOf function, as exploited in the wild in July 2015.

Severity breakdown

CVSS v3.1 9.8: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack vector: Network. Exploitable remotely over the network, with no need for local or physical access.
Attack complexity: Low. No special conditions; the attack can be repeated reliably.
Privileges required: None. No account or prior access is needed.
User interaction: None. No action from any user is needed.
Scope: Unchanged. Impact stays within the vulnerable component.
Confidentiality impact: High. Total loss of confidentiality; sensitive data can be fully disclosed.
Integrity impact: High. Total loss of integrity; data or system state can be fully modified.
Availability impact: High. Total loss of availability; the component can be shut down.

Underlying weakness

CWE-416: Use After Free

The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory belongs to the code that operates on the new pointer.

Affected products

Adobe Flash Player: from 13.0.0.182 up to and including 13.0.0296; from 14.0.0.125 up to and including 18.0.0.194; up to and including 11.2.202.468
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop: 5.0; 6.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Eus: 6.6
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server: 5.0; 6.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Aus: 6.6
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server From Rhui: 5.0; 6.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation: 5.0; 6.0
Opensuse Evergreen: 11.4
Opensuse: 13.1; 13.2
Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop: 11 sp3; 11 sp4; 12
Suse Linux Enterprise Workstation Extension: 12