Skip to main content
Live Webinar with SANS (June 25)— Agentic CTI Automation for Fun & ProfitRegister Free
Mallory
High

Use-After-Free RCE in Microsoft Office Excel

IdentifiersCVE-2025-59236CWE-416· Use After Free

CVE-2025-59236 is a remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft Office Excel caused by a use-after-free condition. The provided content states that exploitation can be triggered by opening a malicious file, after which Excel may access memory that has already been freed, leading to memory corruption and attacker-controlled code execution in the context of the user running Excel. The issue is described as affecting Microsoft Office Excel specifically and is part of Microsoft’s October 2025 Patch Tuesday updates.

Share:
For your environment

Are you exposed to this one?

Mallory correlates every CVE against your assets, your vendors, and active adversary campaigns. Know which vulnerabilities matter for you, not just which ones are loud.

ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation allows an unauthorized attacker to execute arbitrary code locally in the security context of the current user. In practical terms, this can enable full compromise of the user session, including installation of malware, data theft, and use of the compromised host as a pivot for further activity, subject to the privileges of the victim account.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

Until patches are fully deployed, reduce exposure by preventing users from opening untrusted or unsolicited Excel files, especially files received via email or downloaded from the internet. Use Protected View, application control, attachment filtering, and least-privilege user configurations to reduce the likelihood and impact of exploitation. Where feasible, isolate high-risk document handling workflows.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Apply Microsoft’s October 2025 security updates that address CVE-2025-59236 in Microsoft Office Excel. Organizations should deploy the relevant patched Office/Excel builds through their normal update channels and prioritize systems where users routinely open externally sourced spreadsheet files.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
Microsoft Corporation365 Appsapplication
Microsoft CorporationOfficeapplication
Microsoft CorporationOffice 2019application
Microsoft CorporationOffice 2021application
Microsoft CorporationOffice 2024application
Microsoft CorporationOffice Long Term Servicing Channelapplication
Microsoft CorporationOffice Macos 2021application
Microsoft CorporationOffice Macos 2024application
Microsoft CorporationOffice Online Serverapplication

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

The version that knows your environment.

This page is what’s public. Mallory adds the parts that aren’t: which of your assets are affected, which adversaries are exploiting it right now, which detections to deploy, and what to do tonight.
Exposure mapping

Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.

Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity

Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.