What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2018-16540

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 1.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2018-09-05 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-416

Description

In Artifex Ghostscript before 9.24, attackers able to supply crafted PostScript files to the builtin PDF14 converter could use a use-after-free in copydevice handling to crash the interpreter or possibly have unspecified other impact.

Affected products

• Artifex Ghostscript: before 9.24 — fixed in 9.24
• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 14.04, 16.04, 18.04
• Debian Linux: 8.0, 9.0
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 7.0
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Desktop: 7.0
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server: 7.0, 7.6
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Aus: 7.6
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Eus: 7.5, 7.6
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Tus: 7.6
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Workstation: 7.0
• Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.18: 3.11

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Artifex Ghostscript 9.24. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://git.ghostscript.com/?p=ghostpdl.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=c432131c3fdb2143e148e8ba88555f7f7a63b25e
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2019:0327
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:0229
• https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=699661
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/09/msg00015.html
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201811-12
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3768-1/
• https://www.artifex.com/news/ghostscript-security-resolved/
• https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4288
• http://git.ghostscript.com/?p=ghostpdl.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=c432131c3fdb2143e148e8ba88555f7f7a63b25e
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2019:0327
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:0229

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