Microsoft Office and WordPad Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2017-0199 is a security vulnerability in Microsoft Office and WordPad, added to CISA KEV on November 3, 2021. Patch priority: Patch now. Known ransomware use: yes.
What it is
Microsoft Office and WordPad contain an unspecified vulnerability due to the way the applications parse specially crafted files. Successful exploitation allows for remote code execution.
Known to be used in ransomware campaigns. Active threat actors have chained this vulnerability into ransomware operations — treat patching as a same-week priority, not a "next maintenance window" task. The fix is the same one below; the urgency is higher.
VulnCheck tracked exploitation 1667 days before CISA's KEV listing. VulnCheck's broader catalog of in-the-wild exploitation evidence picked this up before it landed on CISA's formal list. Per-CVE fact about this entry; not a population claim about lead time in general.
Who's affected
Affects anyone using Microsoft 365 or Office to compose, store, or send email, documents, or spreadsheets. In a small practice, that's typically where client communications, engagement letters, and case notes live — credential compromise here means an attacker reads everything that platform stores.
What to do
Apply updates per vendor instructions.
If you don't have someone in-house to verify the patch deployed across every endpoint — or you're not sure whether you're affected — that's exactly the kind of triage we do. Book a free 20-minute triage call.
Insurance readiness
Your insurer will ask if this is patched.
Unpatched entries on CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities list are exactly what cyber-insurance carrier questionnaires probe for, and knowing which controls they check is how you keep a renewal from stalling.
Get the free carrier questionnaire →Severity
CVSS base score: 7.8 — HIGH
Microsoft fix
- KB3141529 (Security Update)
- KB3141538 (Security Update)
- KB3178710 (Security Update)
- KB3178703 (Security Update)
- KB4015549 (Monthly Rollup)
- KB4015546 (Security Only)
- KB4014793 (Security Update)
- KB4015551 (Monthly Rollup)
- KB4015548 (Security Only)
Microsoft Exploitability Index (assessed at update release): Exploitation Less Likely
This CVE is on CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. Microsoft's index reflects their release-time forecast, not current observed activity, and is not automatically revised upward when exploitation appears later.
Vendor workaround
No vendor workaround published. Patching is the only fix.
CISA due date
Federal deadline: May 3, 2022. Federal agencies must complete the required action by this date. For private SMBs the deadline is advisory — but treat it as a strong recommendation, especially if you handle regulated data (HIPAA, GLBA, ABA model rules).
EPSS
EPSS score: 99.9% — higher than 100% of all scored CVEs.
EPSS estimates the probability of exploitation activity in the next 30 days. Every entry on this site is already confirmed exploited, so read it as relative urgency among the things you still have open, not as permission to wait.
Source
This entry comes from CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, public US-Government data we pull daily. The plain-language framing and the what-to-do guidance above are ours. View the original entry on cisa.gov.