When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Macromedia security hole affects Windows, Unix

Darren Bolton Neowin @dazb69 · Aug 11, 2002 15:15 EDT with -1 comments

A security hole in the widely used Macromedia Shockwave Flash file format used with Web browsers can allow an attacker to execute code of their choice on affected systems, according to a new security alert released Friday by eEye Digital Security.

The vulnerability is limited, however, to Shockwave Flash files edited by hand with a binary editor, meaning that the Flash application will not produce files that contain the vulnerability on its own, according to a separate security alert from Macromedia, which is based in San Francisco, Calif.

The vulnerability is serious because it affects Web browsers, which are trusted by firewalls to receive incoming traffic, and because it affects all versions of Shockwave Flash used in the Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator Web browsers running on both Windows and Unix, eEye said.