Software Engineering Institute

Adobe Flash Player is a player for the Flash media format and enables frame-based animations with sound to be viewed within a web browser. The SWF file format is used by Adobe Flash multimedia files. See the Adobe File Format Specification FAQ for more information on the SWF file format.

Adobe Flash Player fails to properly handle malformed SWF files. If a remote attacker can persuade a user to access a specially crafted SWF file, system memory may be corrupted in a way that may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code.

Additionally, Microsoft has released Microsoft Security Advisory (925143) to alert users that affected versions of Flash Player were distributed with Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 2, and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

A remote attacker with the ability to supply a specially crafted SWF file to a vulnerable host may be able to execute arbitrary code on that system. The attacker-supplied code would be executed with the privileges of the user opening the file.
Note that an attacker may be able to exploit this vulnerability by embedding a specially crafted SWF file in a web page and then convincing a user to access that page.

Upgrade Flash Player
Adobe has addressed this issue in Adobe Flash Player 9.0.16.0.

Apply updates

Users who are unable to upgrade to Adobe Flash Player 9.0.16.0 should apply the appropriate player update listed in Adobe Security Bulletin APSB06-11.

Users running operating systems that do not support Adobe Flash Player 8 should refer to the updates in Adobe's Flash Player TechNote.

Microsoft has released an update to address this issue. See Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-069 for more details.

Disable Adobe Flash Player in your web browser

Until it is possible to upgrade to Adobe Flash Player 9.0.16.0 or apply the appropriate update, disabling Adobe Flash Player in the web browser will reduce the chances of exploitation.