CVE-2025-21402
Microsoft Office 2024
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HSummary
CVE-2025-21402 is a high-severity Improper Restriction of Names for Files and Other Resources (CWE-641) vulnerability in Microsoft Office. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Data from Local System (T1005); ranked at the 48th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary
Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.
CVE-2025-21402 is a Remote Code Execution vulnerability in Microsoft Office OneNote. Published on January 14, 2025, it carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.8 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) and is associated with CWE-641 and NVD-CWE-noinfo.
The vulnerability requires local access (AV:L), low attack complexity (AC:L), no privileges (PR:N), and user interaction (UI:R), such as opening a malicious file. An attacker who can convince a user to interact with a specially crafted OneNote document can achieve remote code execution, resulting in high impacts to confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H) within the affected scope (S:U).
Microsoft's advisory on the MSRC Update Guide at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2025-21402 provides details on mitigation, including available patches and security updates for affected OneNote versions.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-2462
Vulnerability Data
Microsoft Office OneNote Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
SI-10 requires validation of inputs used to construct resource names, directly stopping malformed or dangerous names from being accepted.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC practices directly require input validation and sanitization to restrict resource names derived from untrusted data.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing can detect improper filename handling but does not itself prevent the weakness.
Secure development life cycle mandates input validation and safe resource naming practices that directly prevent CWE-641.
Application security requirements include rules for handling untrusted input when constructing file or resource names.
Secure system architecture principles discourage unsafe resource naming but do not prescribe specific controls.
Secure coding standards explicitly require validation and sanitization of filenames derived from external input.