CVE-2016-7888 in Digital Editions
Summary
by MITRE
Adobe Digital Editions versions 4.5.2 and earlier has an important vulnerability that could lead to memory address leak.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/12/2022
Adobe Digital Editions version 4.5.2 and earlier contains a critical memory address leak vulnerability that represents a significant security risk for users of the digital publishing platform. This vulnerability falls under the category of memory corruption issues and is classified as a CWE-476 Null Pointer Dereference, which occurs when an application attempts to access memory at a null pointer address. The flaw manifests in the application's handling of memory management during document processing and rendering operations within the digital editioning environment.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from insufficient input validation and memory management controls within Adobe Digital Editions' core processing libraries. When the application processes certain malformed or specially crafted digital content files, it fails to properly validate memory pointers before dereferencing them, leading to information disclosure through memory address leaks. This type of vulnerability is particularly dangerous because it can expose sensitive memory layout information that attackers could potentially leverage for more sophisticated attacks.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple information disclosure, as it creates opportunities for attackers to gain insights into the application's memory structure and potentially exploit related vulnerabilities. Attackers could use the leaked memory addresses to bypass security mechanisms such as address space layout randomization, which is a common defense against exploitation. The vulnerability affects users who process digital content files, particularly those containing embedded objects or complex formatting elements that trigger the problematic code paths within the application's memory management subsystem.
Organizations and individual users should immediately update to Adobe Digital Editions version 4.5.3 or later, which contains the necessary patches to address this memory address leak vulnerability. System administrators should ensure that all endpoints running Adobe Digital Editions are updated through proper patch management procedures. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of maintaining up-to-date software versions and implementing proper input validation controls to prevent memory corruption issues. Security teams should monitor for potential exploitation attempts targeting this vulnerability through techniques such as memory analysis and network traffic inspection. This issue aligns with ATT&CK technique T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter and T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation, as attackers may use the information disclosure to facilitate more advanced attack vectors. The vulnerability also highlights the need for proper software security testing including memory safety analysis and fuzzing to identify similar issues in digital content processing applications.