Adobe Flash Vulnerability Protection Available From Watchguard
- By Grey McKenzie
- Published 06/4/2008
Grey McKenzie
National Cyber Security Founder
Cyber security watchdog & one of the nation's leading cyber security experts, Grey McKenzie is also the Founder of SpyCop Security Software.
His clients include members of the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, State & Local Law Enforcement.
He is regularly consulted by industry leaders regarding cyber security issues.
To schedule a procedural, technical and non-technical network security audit of your company call 902-467-0200
WatchGuard Technologies, a provider of network security solutions, announced that its WatchGuard Firebox family of unified threat management (UTM) network security appliances can protect networks from the latest Adobe Flash vulnerability.
"This represents a classic example of a 'zero-day' attack," said Tim Helming, director of product management at WatchGuard Technologies.
"From the moment an exploit is discovered to the date that a system is upgraded or patched, business networks are vulnerable.
Here, WatchGuard customers can continue to run their networks worry-free because our appliances automatically defend against this type of threat."
Adobe Flash Player displays interactive, animated Web content called
Flash, which is often formatted as a Shockwave (.SWF) file, and is
supported by most web browsers.
The threat occurs when a user downloads
and plays a specially crafted Shockwave Flash (.SWF) file.
In doing so, an attacker can exploit a flaw in .SWF to execute code on the user's computer, which could lead to an attacker gaining complete control over the victim's computer.
Malicious .SWF files can be hosted on websites, or sent via an HTML email, or delivered in other applications that embed Flash.
Compounding this threat is the fact that hackers can inject this
exploit into legitimate websites, using a sophisticated but highly
popular web attack, known as SQL injections.
Industry reports estimate that approximately 250,000 legitimate websites may be currently and unknowingly hosting these malicious .SWF files.
By using WatchGuard's application proxy technology, which is included in WatchGuard's UTM appliances, the company stated that administrators can prevent network computer users from accessing Shockwave Flash (.SWF) files via the web (HTTP) or by e-mail (SMTP, POP3).
