CVE-2016-0139
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedMicrosoft Excel 2010 SP2, Word for Mac 2011, and Excel Viewer allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted Office document, aka "Microsoft Office Memory Corruption Vulnerability."
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceThis is a memory corruption vulnerability in Microsoft Office products (Excel 2010 SP2, Word for Mac 2011, Excel Viewer) that allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by tricking users into opening specially crafted malicious Office documents. The vulnerability stems from improper memory handling when parsing Office file formats, enabling attackers to overwrite memory and inject malicious code.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data= 2010all versions= 2011CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- Required
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Identify installed Microsoft Excel version on WindowsOpen Excel, go to File > Account > About Excel, or right-click excel.exe in Program Files/Microsoft Office and select Properties > Details to view the version numberAffected if Version is 2010 (14.0.x) without security updates applied
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Check for Microsoft Excel Viewer installationLook for ExcelViewer.exe in Program Files/Microsoft Office or check Add/Remove Programs (Programs and Features) for Excel Viewer entryAffected if Excel Viewer is installed (all versions are affected)
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Identify Microsoft Word for Mac 2011 installationOn Mac systems, check /Applications folder for Microsoft Word 2011.app, or open Word and go to Word > About Microsoft Word to view versionAffected if Word for Mac 2011 is installed without updates
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Verify current patch state via Windows Update historyOpen Windows Update, view Update History, and look for security updates related to March 2016 (KB3114883 and related Office security bulletins)Affected if No recent Office security updates from March 2016 or later are installed
User is affected if any of the affected Office products (Excel 2010, Excel Viewer, Word for Mac 2011) are installed without the March 2016 security updates applied.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataApply Microsoft security updates KB3114883 and related patches for the affected Office products. Until patches are applied, implement controls to block opening of untrusted Office documents from external sources and disable macro execution in Office applications.
- Consultation2.0 h
- Implementation4.0 h
- Testing2.0 h
- Review / QA1.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $2,560.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2016-0139 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2016-0139 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.
- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data