[Full-disclosure] pacsec hype security advisory: seven words of warning about Flash player nine.

[Dragos Ruiu <dr@xxxxxxx>]

PacSec Hype Security Team Advisory:

"The new Flash player adds network functions!"

Details:

With a minor amount of fanfare "binary socket" support has been
added to Flash Player 9 / ActionScript 3.0. The Flash sandbox model
is primarily focused on preventing modifications to the local system,
and thus there are many ways to bypass the only-connect-back-upstream
and port < 1024 limitations on the SWF applet Socket() class. A 
(potentially malicious) server can override the limit with a 
cross domain policy file on the server, or it can be overriden 
locally at the player with a global setting/policy change, or 
by configuring the applet as trusted. 

Adobe has a paper on flash security configuration at:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/flash_player_9_security.pdf

The potential for network misuse possible in Flash just went up 
several orders of magnitude, and as the Adobe site triumphantly 
proclaims it's apparently in use at 97.3% of networked computers. 
I'll avoid some of the more exotic scenarios, lest they give 
anyone some bad ideas - and leave this caveat at this warning.

Audited the trusted Flash applets on your system lately?

Forewarned is Forearmed.

cheers,
--dr

-- 
World Security Pros. Cutting Edge Training, Tools, and Techniques
Tokyo, Japan    November 27-30 2006    http://pacsec.jp
pgpkey http://dragos.com/ kyxpgp

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