Finding and Fixing Security Bugs in Flash

Over the past couple of years, Adobe Flash has been repeatedly targeted by attackers in the wild. Despite an increasing number of bug fixes and mitigations implemented in the software, previously unknown 0-day vulnerabilities continue to be uncovered and used by malicious attackers. This presentation describes my team's work to reduce the number and impact of 0-day vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash.

It will start with an overview of how attackers have targeted Flash in the past, and then explain how some of the most common types of bugs work. It will then discuss how we find similar vulnerabilities. It will go through some examples of typical, and less typical bugs, showing how they violate the assumptions made by Flash Player, and how they can be exploited. This talk will also discuss recent Flash and platform mitigations, and how they impact the severity and discoverability of security bugs.

Natalie Silvanovich is a security researcher on Google Project Zero. She has spent the last seven years working in mobile security, both finding security issues in mobile software and improving the security of mobile platforms. Outside of work, Natalie enjoys applying her hacking and reverse engineering skills to unusual targets, and has spoken at several conferences on the subject of Tamagotchi hacking. She is actively involved in hackerspaces and is a founding member of Kwartzlab Makerspace in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.