CVE-2023-7101 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) CWE-95 vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2024-01-02) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2024-01-02. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2024-01-23.
- 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-2023-7101.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2023-7101 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,415 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 10–50% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
Spreadsheet::ParseExcel version 0.65 is a Perl module used for parsing Excel files. Spreadsheet::ParseExcel is vulnerable to an arbitrary code execution (ACE) vulnerability due to passing unvalidated input from a file into a string-type “eval”. Specifically, the issue stems from the evaluation of Number format strings (not to be confused with printf-style format strings) within the Excel parsing logic.
Affected Products
debian linuxdebianfedorafedoraprojectspreadsheet\jmcnamaraResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2023-7101 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-7101 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.