This vulnerability is an untrusted pointer dereference in Microsoft Office Word that permits an unauthorized attacker to execute code locally on a target machine. The flaw enables the attacker to run arbitrary code with the privileges of the user who opens the affected document, potentially compromising confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the affected system.

Affected Microsoft products include Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, Microsoft Office 2019, Microsoft Office LTSC 2021, Microsoft Office LTSC 2024, Microsoft Office LTSC for Mac 2021, Microsoft Office LTSC for Mac 2024, Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2019, and Microsoft Word 2016 across the listed platforms and architectures.

The CVSS score of 7.8 indicates a high severity vulnerability. However, the EPSS score of <1% suggests that the likelihood of exploitation in the wild is currently low. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. Attackers likely need to trick the user into opening a malicious Word document or otherwise executing the code locally; the attack vector is therefore inferred to be local file-based exploitation. If exploited, the attacker can gain code execution at the permission level of the user.