Adobe investigates clipboard Flash attacks

Adobe is currently investigating a "clipboard attack" involving its Flash Player, where Flash banner ads have been used to hijack clipboards.

The attack puts a weblink into the users's clipboard. If followed this leads to a website selling fake anti-virus software. The code has been found in Flash-based ads found on legitimate websites, reportedly including websites Newsweek and Digg.

Mac, Windows and Linux users running Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari are said to have been affected.

The attack works by exploiting Adobe Flash files which are used to make display adverts. If the attack is successful it will endlessly delete other text from the clipboard and insert the malicious link in its place.

It is possible to see the effects of this attack from a harmless exploit test page by security researcher Aviv Raff. The aim is to show how easy it is to use Flash with ActionScript code to load a malicious URL onto a targeted clipboard.

If you click on this link and try to paste the contents of the clipboard it will come out as http://www.evil.com. If you try to copy something else it will still have the link http://www.evil.com and will do this continually. (Be warned that you will have to close the browser window or the tab with the exploit page to make it go away).

Adobe said on its Product Security Incident Response Team blog: "Adobe is currently investigating potential solutions to this issue and will update customers as soon as we have more information to provide."