Summary
Impact: Security Feature Bypass. Microsoft rating: Important. Exploited according to Microsoft, publicly disclosed before the fix — Exploitation Detected. Customer action: Required.
Details
According to the CVSS metric, user interaction is required (UI:R). What interaction would the user have to do?
An attacker must send a user a malicious Office file and convince them to open it.
What kind of security feature could be bypassed by successfully exploiting this vulnerability?
This update addresses a vulnerability that bypasses OLE mitigations in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office which protect users from vulnerable COM/OLE controls.
Is the Preview Pane an attack vector for this vulnerability?
No, the Preview Pane is not an attack vector.
Security updates
https — https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/office365-proplus-security-updates
16.106.26020821 — https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=831049
Vulnerabilities 1
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High 7.8
Microsoft Word Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
Reliance on untrusted inputs in a security decision in Microsoft Office Word allows an unauthorized attacker to bypass a security feature locally.
KEV Feb 10, 2026
Revision history
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#1
Information published.
References
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CVE-2026-21514 Microsoft Word Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability - HTML
https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2026-21514
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Microsoft Exploitability Index
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/exploitability-index?rtc=1
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Microsoft Support Lifecycle
https://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle
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Common Vulnerability Scoring System
https://www.first.org/cvss