CVE-2006-2492 — OFFICE
HIGHCVE-2006-2492 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) CWE-120 vulnerability in microsoft office. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-06-08) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Buffer overflow in Microsoft Word in Office 2000 SP3, Office XP SP3, Office 2003 Sp1 and SP2, and Microsoft Works Suites through 2006, allows user-assisted attackers to execute arbitrary…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-06-08. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-06-22.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2006-2492.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2006-2492 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 10–50% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
Buffer overflow in Microsoft Word in Office 2000 SP3, Office XP SP3, Office 2003 Sp1 and SP2, and Microsoft Works Suites through 2006, allows user-assisted attackers to execute arbitrary code via a malformed object pointer, as originally reported by ISC on 20060519 for a zero-day attack.
Affected Products
officemicrosoftworks suitemicrosoftResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Buffer overflow in Microsoft Word in Office 2000 SP3, Office XP SP3, Off…
Buffer overflow in Microsoft Word in Office 2000 SP3, Office XP SP3, Off…
Buffer overflow in Microsoft Word in Office 2000 SP3, Office XP SP3, Off…
Buffer overflow in Microsoft Word in Office 2000 SP3, Office XP SP3, Off…
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every microsoft office deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Remediation status
No patch has shipped for CVE-2006-2492 yet — track the microsoft office advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Constrain what reaches the vulnerable code: limit the size and shape of untrusted input, isolate the affected component in a sandboxed or least-privileged process, and enable the platform's memory-safety mitigations (ASLR, stack protector, hardened allocator) so an out-of-bounds access is more likely to fail closed than to be exploitable. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2006-2492 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.