CVE-2014-0519 in Flash Player
Summary
by MITRE
Adobe Flash Player before 13.0.0.214 on Windows and OS X and before 11.2.202.359 on Linux, Adobe AIR SDK before 13.0.0.111, and Adobe AIR SDK & Compiler before 13.0.0.111 allow attackers to bypass intended access restrictions via unspecified vectors, a different vulnerability than CVE-2014-0517, CVE-2014-0518, and CVE-2014-0520.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 06/19/2021
Adobe Flash Player versions prior to 13.0.0.214 on Windows and OS X systems, and versions before 11.2.202.359 on Linux systems, along with Adobe AIR SDK versions before 13.0.0.111, contained a critical access control vulnerability that allowed remote attackers to bypass intended security restrictions. This vulnerability represented a distinct threat vector from other related flaws such as CVE-2014-0517, CVE-2014-0518, and CVE-2014-0520, indicating that the security bypass occurred through different technical mechanisms. The unspecified vectors involved in this vulnerability likely exploited weaknesses in Flash Player's permission model or sandboxing mechanisms that govern how applications interact with system resources and network access. This flaw would have enabled attackers to execute unauthorized operations that should have been restricted by the Flash runtime's security policies.
The technical implications of this vulnerability extend beyond simple privilege escalation, as it fundamentally compromised the security model that Flash Player implemented to isolate potentially malicious content from the underlying operating system. The vulnerability could have allowed attackers to access local files, execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges, or bypass network security restrictions that were designed to prevent cross-site scripting attacks and other malicious activities. This represents a classic sandbox escape scenario where the boundaries between trusted and untrusted content became porous, potentially enabling attackers to leverage the Flash runtime as a foothold for broader system compromise. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-284, which addresses improper access control issues, and could be categorized under ATT&CK technique T1059 for execution through Flash-based attacks.
Organizations and users faced significant operational risks from this vulnerability, as Flash Player was widely deployed across enterprise environments and consumer systems, making the potential attack surface extremely broad. The vulnerability's presence in multiple platform versions meant that attackers could target different operating systems without needing to tailor their exploitation techniques significantly. System administrators would have needed to urgently deploy patches across all affected platforms, including the Linux variants, which often receive less immediate attention than Windows and macOS environments. The impact extended to web applications that relied on Flash content, as attackers could exploit this vulnerability through malicious web pages or embedded content, potentially leading to data breaches, system compromise, or the installation of additional malware. Security teams would have had to implement emergency mitigations while waiting for official patches, potentially involving disabling Flash content entirely or implementing network-level restrictions. The vulnerability's classification as a privilege escalation or access control flaw meant that it could have enabled attackers to perform actions that should have required elevated system permissions, fundamentally undermining the security architecture of affected systems.