What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-16855: Microsoft Office Information Disclosure Vulnerability

• Severity: medium (CVSS 4.3 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 4.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2020-09-11 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-125

Description

<p>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.</p> <p>Exploitation of the vulnerability requires that a user open a specially crafted file with an affected version of Microsoft Office software.</p> <p>The security update addresses the vulnerability by properly initializing the affected variable.</p>

Affected products

• Microsoft Office: 2016, 2019
• Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac: from 16.0.0 before publication — fixed in publication
• Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac: from 16.0.0 before publication — fixed in publication

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac publication; Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac publication. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security-guidance/advisory/CVE-2020-16855
• https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security-guidance/advisory/CVE-2020-16855

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