Executive brief
Microsoft Excel is a widely-used spreadsheet application essential to business operations and data analysis. An out-of-bounds read vulnerability in Excel could allow an attacker to access sensitive data stored in memory, such as confidential spreadsheets, financial records, or customer information. This vulnerability requires local access to be exploited, limiting the immediate risk but potentially enabling data theft or compliance violations.
Technical details
The vulnerability is an out-of-bounds read in Microsoft Excel that occurs when the application accesses memory beyond allocated boundaries during processing of specially crafted spreadsheet files. The flaw requires local access to the affected system and interaction with a malicious Excel file to trigger the vulnerability. Successful exploitation allows an attacker to read arbitrary data from process memory, potentially disclosing sensitive information. The attack vector is local, and while Microsoft has released security updates, affected users must apply patches to remediate the issue.
Affected products
- Microsoft Office Excel <UNKNOWN>
Timeline
- 2026-08-11: disclosed