Microsoft Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2 and R2 SP1, Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 Gold and R2, Windows RT Gold and 8.1, Windows 10, Excel 2007 SP3, PowerPoint 2007 SP3, Visio 2007 SP3, Word 2007 SP3, Office 2010 SP2, Excel 2010 SP2, PowerPoint 2010 SP2, Visio 2010 SP2, Word 2010 SP2, Excel 2013 SP1, PowerPoint 2013 SP1, Visio 2013 SP1, Word 2013 SP1, Excel 2013 RT SP1, PowerPoint 2013 RT SP1, Visio 2013 RT SP1, Word 2013 RT SP1, and Internet Explorer 7 through 11 allow remote attackers to gain privileges and obtain sensitive information via a crafted command-line parameter to an Office application or Notepad, as demonstrated by a transition from Low Integrity to Medium Integrity, aka Unsafe Command Line Parameter Passing Vulnerability.
The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Excel | Microsoft | 2007-sp3 (including) | 2007-sp3 (including) |
| Excel | Microsoft | 2010-sp2 (including) | 2010-sp2 (including) |
| Excel | Microsoft | 2013-sp1 (including) | 2013-sp1 (including) |
| Office | Microsoft | 2010-sp2 (including) | 2010-sp2 (including) |
| Powerpoint | Microsoft | 2007-sp3 (including) | 2007-sp3 (including) |
| Powerpoint | Microsoft | 2010-sp2 (including) | 2010-sp2 (including) |
| Powerpoint | Microsoft | 2013-sp1 (including) | 2013-sp1 (including) |
| Visio | Microsoft | 2007-sp3 (including) | 2007-sp3 (including) |
| Visio | Microsoft | 2010-sp2 (including) | 2010-sp2 (including) |
| Visio | Microsoft | 2013-sp1 (including) | 2013-sp1 (including) |
| Visio | Microsoft | 2016 (including) | 2016 (including) |
| Word | Microsoft | 2007-sp3 (including) | 2007-sp3 (including) |
| Word | Microsoft | 2010-sp2 (including) | 2010-sp2 (including) |
| Word | Microsoft | 2013-sp1 (including) | 2013-sp1 (including) |
| Word | Microsoft | 2016 (including) | 2016 (including) |
There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:
Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:
Information exposures can occur in different ways:
It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.