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Aakash Rahsi
Aakash Rahsi

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CVE-2026-21521 | Word Copilot Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Read Complete Analysis ## | https://www.aakashrahsi.online/post/cve-2026-21521

CVE-2026-21521 is one of those reminders that AI assistants don’t live in isolation – they sit on top of identity, content, policy, and telemetry you either control… or you don’t.

Microsoft has disclosed CVE-2026-21521 | Word Copilot Information Disclosure Vulnerability as a case where Word Copilot may surface content that should have stayed out-of-scope. Not malware, not a breach headline – but a governance exam for every tenant that claims to be “AI ready”.

I don’t look at this as “just” an information disclosure bug.

I treat it as a live test of your Copilot boundary architecture:

  • Do you actually know which Word documents, sites, and libraries are allowed to feed Copilot?
  • Can you prove which labels, DLP rules, and permissions stood between Copilot and your most sensitive content on the day this CVE landed?
  • If Copilot drifted, can you reconstruct the journey in Sentinel across identity, device, app, and query – not just the document ID?

In my write-up, I frame CVE-2026-21521 as a Word Copilot control-plane problem, not a scare story:

  • How to turn an information disclosure vulnerability into a hardening opportunity for Microsoft 365 tenants that actually want to be proud of their AI posture
  • How to stay fully aligned with Microsoft’s platform direction while still holding a strict line on data boundaries, scope, and auditability

If you live in the world of Entra, Purview, Defender, Intune, Copilot for Microsoft 365, and Sentinel, this isn’t a “blog post”.

It’s a blueprint for how you explain to your board, your auditors, and your own engineers that AI assistance and data boundaries are the same conversation.

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