CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2020-16929 — <p>A remote code execution vulnerability exists in Microsoft Excel software when the software fails to properly handle objects in memory
<p>A remote code execution vulnerability exists in Microsoft Excel software when the software fails to properly handle objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could run arbitrary code in the context of the current user. If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker could take control of the affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.</p> <p>Exploitation of the vulnerability requires that a user open a specially crafted file with an affected version of Microsoft Excel. In an email attack scenario, an attacker could exploit the vulnerability by sending the specially crafted file to the user and convincing the user to open the file. In a web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a website (or leverage a compromised website that accepts or hosts user-provided content) containing a specially crafted file designed to exploit the vulnerability. An attacker would have no wa…
- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 7.8 (3.1)
- Published
- 2020-10-16
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- windows/system
- Weaknesses
- CWE-416
Affected products
- microsoft / 365_apps
- microsoft / excel / 2010
- microsoft / excel / 2013
- microsoft / excel / 2016
- microsoft / excel_web_app / 2010
- microsoft / office / 2010
Matched remediation archetype
Use-after-free, double free, and expired resource use
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Trace ownership, references, callbacks, asynchronous tasks, and teardown paths around the affected object or resource.
- Identify reachable inputs and timing or state transitions that can release the object while references remain.
- Confirm affected builds, allocators, feature flags, architectures, and process privileges.
Remediate safely
- Apply the maintained ownership or lifetime fix and rebuild all artifacts containing the affected native code.
- Use explicit ownership, safe reference management, cancellation and join semantics, and idempotent teardown.
- Add deterministic lifetime tests plus isolated sanitizer and concurrency coverage for shutdown and error paths.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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