What damage can adobe flash player do to a linux machine?

Question

I am curious what damage can adobe flash player do to a linux machine. I have read the adobe flash security bulletin and I saw that a lot of vulnerabilities affected linux(crossplatform). Please explain to me if you can. I am a linux beginner. On adobe security bulletin they state that:"This vulnerability (CVE-2010-2884) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.'" And there are a lot of vulnerabilities cross platform.

Thank you so much!

Answer 1

This question is common.

1. It can do anything you can do. This includes deleting all of the documents you've created, silently corrupting them, sending your wife your girlfriend's number (or vice versa), starting a botnet, or mailing your real income information to the IRS.

2. With a little extra help (there was a privilege escalation vulnerability in recent Linux kernels for example), it can gain root access and do anything that the computer can do. This could conceivably have effects on the hardware level (though it has been a while since I've heard of a virus doing something like this.

Answer 2

As the report says, the vulnerability can "allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (memory corruption)". So basically any code can be run as the user running Flash.