CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2015-6688

Use After Free

Published: Oct 14, 2015 | Modified: Sep 08, 2021
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
6.8 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Use-after-free vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 10.x before 10.1.16 and 11.x before 11.0.13, Acrobat and Acrobat Reader DC Classic before 2015.006.30094, and Acrobat and Acrobat Reader DC Continuous before 2015.009.20069 on Windows and OS X allows attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted Optional Content Groups (OCG) object in a WillSave document action, a different vulnerability than CVE-2015-5586, CVE-2015-6683, CVE-2015-6684, CVE-2015-6687, CVE-2015-6689, CVE-2015-6690, CVE-2015-6691, CVE-2015-7615, CVE-2015-7617, and CVE-2015-7621.

Weakness

Referencing memory after it has been freed can cause a program to crash, use unexpected values, or execute code.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Acrobat Adobe 10.0 10.1.15
Acrobat Adobe 11.0.0 11.0.12
Acrobat_dc Adobe 15.006.30060 *
Acrobat_dc Adobe 15.008.20082 *
Acrobat_reader Adobe 10.0 10.1.15
Acrobat_reader Adobe 11.0.0 11.0.12
Acrobat_reader_dc Adobe 15.006.30060 *
Acrobat_reader_dc Adobe 15.008.20082 *

Extended Description

The use of previously-freed memory can have any number of adverse consequences, ranging from the corruption of valid data to the execution of arbitrary code, depending on the instantiation and timing of the flaw. The simplest way data corruption may occur involves the system’s reuse of the freed memory. Use-after-free errors have two common and sometimes overlapping causes:

In this scenario, the memory in question is allocated to another pointer validly at some point after it has been freed. The original pointer to the freed memory is used again and points to somewhere within the new allocation. As the data is changed, it corrupts the validly used memory; this induces undefined behavior in the process. If the newly allocated data happens to hold a class, in C++ for example, various function pointers may be scattered within the heap data. If one of these function pointers is overwritten with an address to valid shellcode, execution of arbitrary code can be achieved.

Potential Mitigations

References