CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2016-0959

Use After Free

Published: Jun 27, 2017 | Modified: May 08, 2023
CVSS 3.x
9.8
CRITICAL
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
10 HIGH
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
RedHat/V2
6.8 CRITICAL
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu
MEDIUM

Use after free vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player Desktop Runtime before 20.0.0.267, Adobe Flash Player Extended Support Release before 18.0.0.324, Adobe Flash Player for Google Chrome before 20.0.0.267, Adobe Flash Player for Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11 before 20.0.0.267, Adobe Flash Player for Internet Explorer 10 and 11 before 20.0.0.267, Adobe Flash Player for Linux before 11.2.202.559, AIR Desktop Runtime before 20.0.0.233, AIR SDK before 20.0.0.233, AIR SDK & Compiler before 20.0.0.233, AIR for Android before 20.0.0.233.

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
Flash_player Adobe * 20.0.0.235 (including)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Supplementary RedHat flash-plugin-0:11.2.202.559-1.el5 *
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Supplementary RedHat flash-plugin-0:11.2.202.559-1.el6_7 *
Adobe-flashplugin Ubuntu trusty *
Adobe-flashplugin Ubuntu upstream *
Flashplugin-nonfree Ubuntu trusty *
Flashplugin-nonfree Ubuntu upstream *

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