CVE-2010-3333 — OFFICE
HIGHCVE-2010-3333 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) Out-of-bounds Write vulnerability in microsoft office. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Stack-based buffer overflow in Microsoft Office XP SP3, Office 2003 SP3, Office 2007 SP2, Office 2010, Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac, Office for Mac 2011, and Open XML File Format Converter…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-03. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-03-24.
- 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-2010-3333.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2010-3333 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
Stack-based buffer overflow in Microsoft Office XP SP3, Office 2003 SP3, Office 2007 SP2, Office 2010, Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac, Office for Mac 2011, and Open XML File Format Converter for Mac allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via crafted RTF data, aka "RTF Stack Buffer Overflow Vulnerability."
Affected Products
officemicrosoftopen xml file format convertermicrosoftResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
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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-2010-3333 yet — track the microsoft office advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Stop feeding it untrusted input: reject or quarantine files and payloads from unverified sources until you can upgrade, restrict accepted formats to the ones you actually need, and run the parsing or decoding step in a least-privileged sandbox or short-lived worker so a crash or corrupted read cannot reach the rest of the process. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2010-3333 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.