CVE-2025-54896
Use After Free in Microsoft Office Excel — Spreadsheet component flaw
Executive Summary
CVE-2025-54896 is a high severity vulnerability affecting binary-analysis, binary-analysis. It is classified as Use After Free. Ensure your systems and dependencies are patched immediately to mitigate exposure risks.
Precogs AI Insight
"This exposure is a direct consequence of within After Free, allowing a failure to enforce strict data boundary conditions. Adversaries commonly weaponize this defect by gain unauthorized read or write access, effectively hijacking underlying configurations. The Precogs Binary SAST engine detects such memory corruption vulnerabilities to alert security teams to imminent boundary violations."
What is this vulnerability?
CVE-2025-54896 is categorized as a critical Buffer Overflow flaw. Based on our vulnerability intelligence, this issue occurs when the application fails to securely handle untrusted data boundaries.
Use After Free in Microsoft Office Excel — Spreadsheet component flaw. CVSS 7.5 — Excel spreadsheet processing memory corruption vulnerability.
This architectural defect enables adversaries to bypass intended security controls, directly manipulating the application's execution state or data layer. Immediate strategic intervention is required.
Risk Assessment
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| CVSS Base Score | 7.5 (HIGH) |
| Vector String | N/A |
| Published | March 21, 2026 |
| Last Modified | March 21, 2026 |
| Related CWEs | CWE-416 |
Impact on Systems
✅ Remote Code Execution: Attackers can overwrite the instruction pointer (EIP/RIP) to redirect execution to malicious shellcode.
✅ Memory Corruption: Overwriting adjacent memory regions can corrupt critical application state, leading to unpredictable privilege escalation.
✅ Denial of Service: Triggering segmentation faults and kernel panics results in immediate disruption of critical systems.
How to fix this issue?
Implement the following strategic mitigations immediately to eliminate the attack surface.
1. Memory-Safe Languages Where possible, migrate critical parsing logic to memory-safe languages like Rust or Go.
2. Safe Standard Libraries Replace unbounded C functions (strcpy, sprintf) with boundary-checking equivalents (strncpy, snprintf).
3. Compiler Defenses Ensure software is compiled with modern defensive flags: ASLR, DEP/NX, Stack Canaries (SSP), and Position Independent Executables (PIE).
Vulnerability Signature
// Vulnerable C Function
void parse_network_packet(char *untrusted_data) \{
char local_buffer[128];
// VULNERABLE: strcpy does not verify the length of the source data
strcpy(local_buffer, untrusted_data);
printf("Packet Processed.");
\}
// EXPLOIT PAYLOAD: 128 bytes of padding + [Overwrite EIP Address]
References and Sources
- NVD — CVE-2025-54896
- MITRE — CVE-2025-54896
- CWE-416 — MITRE CWE
- CWE-416 Details
- Binary Analysis Vulnerabilities
- Binary Analysis Vulnerabilities
Vulnerability Code Signature
Attack Data Flow
| Stage | Detail |
|---|---|
| Source | Memory allocation pointer |
| Vector | Pointer is accessed after the memory has been freed |
| Sink | Dangling pointer dereference |
| Impact | Memory corruption, sandbox escape, Remote Code Execution (RCE) |
Vulnerable Code Pattern
// ❌ VULNERABLE: Use After Free
char *ptr = malloc(256);
free(ptr);
// Taint sink: accessing freed memory
strcpy(ptr, "Exploit payload");
Secure Code Pattern
// ✅ SECURE: Nullifying pointers
char *ptr = malloc(256);
free(ptr);
// Sanitized state: pointer set to NULL
ptr = NULL;
How Precogs Detects This
Precogs Binary SAST engine identifies dangling pointers and complex use-after-free conditions in compiled rendering engines and system libraries.\n