CVE-2020-16855: Microsoft Office Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Overview

Severity
Medium (CVSS 5.5)
CVSS Vector
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N/E:P/RL:O/RC:C
Category
Information Disclosure
Exploit Status
Not Exploited
Exploitation Likelihood
Less Likely
Patch Tuesday
2020-Sep
Released
2020-09-08
Last Updated
2020-09-16
EPSS Score
19.87% (percentile: 95.4%)

Description

An information disclosure vulnerability exists when Microsoft Office software reads out of bound memory due to an uninitialized variable, which could disclose the contents of memory. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could view out of bound memory. Exploitation of the vulnerability requires that a user open a specially crafted file with an affected version of Microsoft Office software. The security update addresses the vulnerability by properly initializing the affected variable.

FAQ

What type of information could be disclosed by this vulnerability? The type of information that could be disclosed if an attacker successfully exploited this vulnerability is memory layout - the vulnerability allows an attacker to collect information that facilitates predicting addressing of the memory. Is the Preview Pane an attack vector for this vulnerability? No, the Preview Pane is not an attack vector. Are the updates for the Microsoft Office for Mac currently available? The security update for Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac and Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac are not immediately available. The updates will be released as soon as possible, and when they are available, customers will be notified via a revision to this CVE information.

Affected Products (2)

Other

  • 11575
  • 10734

Security Updates (1)

Acknowledgments

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Revision History

  • 2020-09-08: Information published.
  • 2020-09-16: Microsoft is announcing the availability of the security updates for Microsoft Office for Mac. Customers running affected Mac software should install the update for their product to be protected from this vulnerability. Customers running other Microsoft Office software do not need to take any action. See the Release Notes for more information and download links.