CVE-2014-2817: Microsoft Internet Explorer elevation of privilege via crafted website

Automated analysis

Generated by VULONE's analysis model from the NVD record, CISA KEV and EPSS data on 17 September 2026. Confidence: medium.

high priorityIt is in CISA's KEV catalog with confirmed in-the-wild exploitation and a high CVSS score, though it affects a legacy browser that is largely out of support.

What it is

Internet Explorer 6 through 11 contains an elevation of privilege flaw that a remote attacker can trigger by convincing a user to visit a crafted website. The record gives no root-cause detail beyond the CWE being 'insufficient information', but the impact is full compromise of confidentiality, integrity and availability on the affected host. It matters because IE shipped broadly and the flaw is listed in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

Impact

An attacker gains elevated privileges on the victim's system, with high impact to confidentiality, integrity and availability per the CVSS vector. In practice this means code or actions at a higher privilege level than the browser content should allow.

Attack surface

Reached over the network through a crafted web page viewed in Internet Explorer; the CVSS vector requires user interaction (UI:R) and no prior authentication (PR:N). The user must be lured into opening the page, typically via a link or hosted content.

Exploitation

CISA added this to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-05-25 with a remediation due date of 2022-06-15, indicating exploitation in the wild. EPSS gives a 30-day probability of 0.26349 (97.9th percentile), and no ransomware campaign use is recorded.

What to do

• Apply the Microsoft security update referenced in MS14-051 (patch first).
• Retire or block Internet Explorer; move users to a supported browser.
• Restrict browsing to trusted sites and block untrusted ActiveX or script content where feasible.
• Enforce least privilege so a browser compromise does not yield administrative rights.
• Track KEV remediation deadlines and confirm the patch is deployed on any remaining IE hosts.

Detection

• Hunt for Internet Explorer processes spawning unexpected child processes or writing to privileged locations.
• Monitor for suspicious outbound connections or payload downloads following IE page loads.
• Review proxy and web logs for access to known malicious or newly registered domains from IE user agents.
• Audit hosts still running IE 6 through 11 and verify patch state against MS14-051.

This assessment is produced automatically and is not human-reviewed. Verify against the vendor advisory before acting on it.