CVE-2025-49698: 
vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-49698 is a Use-After-Free (UAF) vulnerability discovered in Microsoft Office Word that was disclosed on July 8, 2025. This vulnerability allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code locally on affected systems. The vulnerability affects various versions of Microsoft Office, including Office Professional Plus 2016, Office Professional 2016, Office Standard 2016, Office Home and Business 2016, and Office Home and Student 2016 (Microsoft Support, NVD).

The vulnerability is classified as a Use-After-Free (UAF) vulnerability that occurs when Microsoft Office Word attempts to access memory that has already been freed. It has been assigned a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.8 HIGH, with the following vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H. The attack requires local access and user interaction, but no privileges are needed to execute the attack (NVD, Talos).

If successfully exploited, this vulnerability allows an unauthorized attacker to execute arbitrary code locally on the affected system with the same privileges as the victim user. This could potentially lead to complete system compromise if the affected user has elevated privileges (NVD).

Microsoft has released security updates to address this vulnerability as part of the July 2025 Patch Tuesday updates. Users are advised to apply the security update KB5002742 through Microsoft Update, Microsoft Update Catalog, or Microsoft Download Center. For systems running Click-to-Run editions of Office 2016, such as Microsoft Office 365 Home, different update mechanisms apply (Microsoft Support).