How severe is CVE-2009-0238?

CVE-2009-0238 has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.8 (HIGH). EPSS estimates a 43.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

CVE-2009-0238: Microsoft Office Remote Code

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities

Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution is confirmed as actively exploited and is listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Added to KEV

2026-04-14

Remediation due

2026-04-28

Required action
Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.

CISA notes
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2009/ms09-009 ; https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2009-0238

Description

Microsoft Office Excel 2000 SP3, 2002 SP3, 2003 SP3, and 2007 SP1; Excel Viewer 2003 Gold and SP3; Excel Viewer; Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats SP1; and Excel in Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted Excel document that triggers an access attempt on an invalid object, as exploited in the wild in February 2009 by Trojan.Mdropper.AC.

Severity

CVSS 3.1 · CISA8.8 HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

SSVC · CISA-ADP

Exploitationactive

Automatableno

Technical impacttotal

Affected Products

Vendor	Product	Affected versions
-	-	n/a

References

11 Links

Vendor advisories

MS09-009

Third-party advisories

TA09-104A

Vulnerability databases

Other references

Record Details

Published

2009-02-25

Last updated

2026-04-15

Assigner (CNA)

microsoft

Credited to

CVE record data © The MITRE Corporation, used under the CVE Terms of Use. Exploited-in-the-wild data from the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (CC0). Exploit prediction scores by FIRST EPSS (first.org/epss). This site is not endorsed or certified by MITRE, NVD, CISA, or FIRST.