CVE-2018-17407

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2018-09-23 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-119

Description

An issue was discovered in t1_check_unusual_charstring functions in writet1.c files in TeX Live before 2018-09-21. A buffer overflow in the handling of Type 1 fonts allows arbitrary code execution when a malicious font is loaded by one of the vulnerable tools: pdflatex, pdftex, dvips, or luatex.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 14.04, 16.04, 18.04, 18.10
Debian Linux: 8.0, 9.0
Tug Tex Live: before 2018-09-21 — fixed in 2018-09-21

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Tug Tex Live 2018-09-21. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://github.com/TeX-Live/texlive-source/commit/6ed0077520e2b0da1fd060c7f88db7b2e6068e4c
https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2018/msg00230.html
https://usn.ubuntu.com/3788-1/
https://usn.ubuntu.com/3788-2/
https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4299
https://github.com/TeX-Live/texlive-source/commit/6ed0077520e2b0da1fd060c7f88db7b2e6068e4c
https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2018/msg00230.html
https://usn.ubuntu.com/3788-1/
https://usn.ubuntu.com/3788-2/
https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4299

Get alerted when CVE-2018-17407 or the next vulnerability affects your stack