CVE-2002-0285: Microsoft Outlook Express

High severity, CVSS 7.5. EPSS: 12.3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

Outlook Express 5.5 and 6.0 on Windows treats a carriage return ("CR") in a message header as if it were a valid carriage return/line feed combination (CR/LF), which could allow remote attackers to bypass virus protection and or other filtering mechanisms via a mail message with headers that only contain the CR, which causes Outlook to create separate headers.

Affected products

• Microsoft Outlook Express: version 5.5 only; version 6.0 only

Published 2002-05-31. Last modified 2026-06-16.