The evidence is now overwhelming that Mark Dowd was, in fact, sent back through time to kill the mother of the person who will grow up to challenge SkyNet. Please direct your attention to Dowd’s 25-page bombshell on a Flash bytecode attack.

Some context. Reliable Flash vulnerabilities are catastrophes. In 2008, we have lots of different browsers. We have different versions of the OS, and we have Mac users. But we’ve only got one Flash vendor, and everyone has Flash installed. Why do you care about Flash exploits? Because in the field, any one of them wins a commanding majority of browser installs for an attacker. It is the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 of clientsides.

So that’s pretty bad-ass. But that’s not why the fate of humanity demands that we hunt down Dowd and dissolve him in molten steel.

Look at the details of this attack. It’s a weaponized NULL pointer attack that desynchronizes a bytecode verifier to slip malicious ActionScript bytecode into the Flash runtime. If you’re not an exploit writer, think of it this way: you know that crazy version of Super Mario Brothers that Japan refused to ship to the US markets because they thought the difficulty would upset and provoke us? This is the exploit equivalent of that guy who played the perfect game of it on YouTube.

Big upz and mad Respekt for Mark Dowd.