THREATPORT/VULNERABILITY/CVE-2006-1540
HIGH SEVERITY

CVE-2006-1540

Office vulnerability

CVSS
9.3
EPSS
43.7%
EPSS pct
99th
Exploited
No known
MSO.DLL in Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP (2002), and Office 2003 allows user-assisted attackers to cause a denial of service and execute arbitrary code via multiple attack vectors, as originally demonstrated using a crafted document record with a malformed string, as demonstrated by replacing a certain "01 00 00 00" byte sequence with an "FF FF FF FF" byte sequence, possibly causing an invalid array index, in (1) an Excel .xls document, which triggers an access violation in ole32.dll; (2) an Excel .xlw document, which triggers an access violation in excel.exe; (3) a Word document, which triggers an access violation in mso.dll in winword.exe; and (4) a PowerPoint document, which triggers an access violation in powerpnt.txt. NOTE: after the initial disclosure, this issue was demonstrated by triggering an integer overflow using an inconsistent size for a Unicode "Sheet Name" string.
Affected vendor
Microsoft
Affected product
Office
CVSS vector
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
Weakness type (CWE)
Published
2006-03-30

Risk analysis

Based on its CVSS vector, this vulnerability is exploitable over the network, medium attack complexity, requiring no authentication. Successful exploitation leads to complete impact to confidentiality, complete impact to integrity, complete impact to availability.

Its EPSS score of 43.7% reflects a moderate probability of exploitation activity in the wild over the next 30 days, placing it among the most exploited CVEs currently tracked.

Check your external exposure to CVE-2006-1540

  • Confirm whether Microsoft Office is running on any internet-facing host or subdomain.
  • Match discovered service fingerprints against the version affected by CVE-2006-1540.
  • Prioritise remediation if the asset is public, business-critical, or near authentication/payment flows.

How ThreatPort helps with CVE-2006-1540

ThreatPort's external attack surface scanner checks your internet-facing assets — agentlessly, from the outside in — for the exposed services and versions that CVE-2006-1540 affects, then prioritises the finding by real risk using CISA KEV and FIRST.org EPSS.

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