Microsoft Security Response Center

**Is the Preview Pane an attack vector for this vulnerability?** Yes, the Preview Pane is an attack vector.

**According to the CVSS metric, the attack complexity is high (AC:H) and privileges required are low (PR:L). What does that mean for this vulnerability?** An attacker must gain access to the victim user's Microsoft Outlook account by compromising or stealing their login credential and then install a malicious form prior to exploiting the vulnerability successfully.

**According to the CVSS metric, user interaction is required (UI:R). What interaction would the user have to do?** Exploitation of this vulnerability requires that an attacker convinces a user to open a maliciously crafted package file in Visual Studio.

**According to the CVSS metric, user interaction is required (UI:R). What interaction would the user have to do?** Exploitation of this vulnerability requires that an attacker convinces a user to open a maliciously crafted package file in Visual Studio.

**What type of information could be disclosed by this vulnerability?** Exploiting this vulnerability could allow the disclosure of certain memory address within kernel space. Knowing the exact location of kernel memory could be potentially leveraged by an attacker for other malicious activities.

**What type of information could be disclosed by this vulnerability?** Exploiting this vulnerability could allow the disclosure of certain memory address within kernel space. Knowing the exact location of kernel memory could be potentially leveraged by an attacker for other malicious activities.

**Use Microsoft Outlook to reduce the risk of users opening RTF Files from unknown or untrusted sources** To help protect against this vulnerability, we recommend users read email messages in plain text format. For guidance on how to configure Microsoft Outlook to read all standard mail in plain text, please refer to Read email messages in plain text. **Impact of workaround:** Email messages that are viewed in plain text format will not contain pictures, specialized fonts, animations, or other rich content. In addition, the following behavior may be experienced: * The changes are applied to the preview pane and to open messages. * Pictures become attachments so that they are not lost. * Because the message is still in Rich Text or HTML format in the store, the object model (custom code solutions) may behave unexpectedly.

**According to the CVSS metric, the attack complexity is high (AC:H). What does that mean for this vulnerability?** Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to win a race condition.

**According to the CVSS metric, the attack complexity is high (AC:H). What does that mean for this vulnerability?** Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to win a race condition.

**According to the CVSS metric, successful exploitation of this vulnerability has a high impact on availability (A:H). What does that mean for this vulnerability??** An attacker can send specially crafted packets which could impact availability of the service resulting in Denial of Service (DoS).