CVE-2025-53731: 
vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-53731 is a Critical remote code execution vulnerability affecting Microsoft Office products. The vulnerability was discovered and disclosed on August 12, 2025, and affects multiple versions of Microsoft Office including Office 2016, Office 2019, Microsoft 365 Apps, and Office LTSC 2021 across Windows and macOS platforms. The vulnerability allows unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code locally by exploiting a use-after-free vulnerability without user interaction, with the Preview Pane serving as an attack vector (NVD, CrowdStrike).

The vulnerability is classified as a use-after-free vulnerability in Microsoft Office with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.4 HIGH (Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H). The vulnerability allows unauthorized attackers to execute code locally without requiring user interaction. The Preview Pane has been identified as a potential attack vector for this vulnerability (NVD, Cybersecurity News).

When successfully exploited, this vulnerability allows attackers to achieve full system compromise with high impact to confidentiality, integrity, and availability of affected systems through arbitrary code execution on the local machine (CrowdStrike).

Microsoft has released an official fix for this vulnerability as part of its August 2025 Patch Tuesday security updates. Organizations are advised to apply all available updates, which can be installed in any order (CrowdStrike).