CVE-2006-6252

Windows Live Messenger vulnerability

CVSS

4.3

EPSS

11.1%

EPSS pct

95th

Exploited

No known

Microsoft Windows Live Messenger 8.0 and earlier, when gestual emoticons are enabled, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) via a long string composed of ":D" sequences, which are interpreted as emoticons.

Affected vendor

Microsoft

Affected product

Windows Live Messenger

CVSS vector

AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Published

2006-12-04

Risk analysis

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

Its EPSS score of 11.1% reflects a moderate probability of exploitation activity in the wild over the next 30 days, placing it above 95% of all scored CVEs.

Check your external exposure to CVE-2006-6252

Confirm whether Microsoft Windows Live Messenger is running on any internet-facing host or subdomain.
Match discovered service fingerprints against the version affected by CVE-2006-6252.
Prioritise remediation if the asset is public, business-critical, or near authentication/payment flows.

How ThreatPort helps with CVE-2006-6252

ThreatPort's external attack surface scanner checks your internet-facing assets — agentlessly, from the outside in — for the exposed services and versions that CVE-2006-6252 affects, then prioritises the finding by real risk using CISA KEV and FIRST.org EPSS.

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