CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2020-0697 — Microsoft Office 365 Proplus security vulnerability
An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists in Microsoft Office OLicenseHeartbeat task, where an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run this task as SYSTEM.To exploit the vulnerability, an authenticated attacker would need to place a specially crafted file in a specific location, thereby allowing arbitrary file corruption.The security update addresses the vulnerability by correcting how the process validates the log file., aka 'Microsoft Office Tampering Vulnerability'.
- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 7.8 (3.1)
- Published
- 2020-02-11
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- windows/system
Affected products
- microsoft / office_365_proplus
Matched remediation archetype
Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
- Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
- Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.
Remediate safely
- Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
- Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
- Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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