What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2009-0238: Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.3 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2026-04-14
• EPSS: 42.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2009-02-25 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-94

Description

Microsoft Office Excel 2000 SP3, 2002 SP3, 2003 SP3, and 2007 SP1; Excel Viewer 2003 Gold and SP3; Excel Viewer; Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats SP1; and Excel in Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted Excel document that triggers an access attempt on an invalid object, as exploited in the wild in February 2009 by Trojan.Mdropper.AC.

Affected products

• Microsoft Excel 2013 Service Pack 1: 2000-sp3, 2002-sp3, 2003-sp3, 2007-sp1
• Microsoft Excel Viewer: all versions
• Microsoft Office: 2004, 2008
• Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack: 2007-sp1
• Microsoft Office Excel Viewer: 2003-sp3

References

• http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2658
• http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=5923
• http://securitytracker.com/id?1021744
• http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/968272.mspx
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/33870
• http://www.symantec.com/business/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2009-022310-4202-99
• http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA09-104A.html
• http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2009/1023
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2009/ms09-009
• https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/48875
• https://oval.cisecurity.org/repository/search/definition/oval%3Aorg.mitre.oval%3Adef%3A5968
• http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2658

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