CVE-2019-14812

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2019-11-27 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-648

Description

A flaw was found in all ghostscript versions 9.x before 9.50, in the .setuserparams2 procedure where it did not properly secure its privileged calls, enabling scripts to bypass `-dSAFER` restrictions. A specially crafted PostScript file could disable security protection and then have access to the file system, or execute arbitrary commands.

Affected products

Artifex Ghostscript: from 9.00 before 9.50 — fixed in 9.50
Fedoraproject Fedora: 31

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Artifex Ghostscript 9.50. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://git.ghostscript.com/?p=ghostpdl.git%3Ba=commitdiff%3Bh=885444fcbe10dc42787ecb76686c8ee4dd33bf33
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2019-14812
https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=701444
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2019-14812
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/LBUC4DBBJTRFNCR3IODBV4IXB2C2HI3V/
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202004-03
http://git.ghostscript.com/?p=ghostpdl.git%3Ba=commitdiff%3Bh=885444fcbe10dc42787ecb76686c8ee4dd33bf33
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2019-14812
https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=701444
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2019-14812
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/LBUC4DBBJTRFNCR3IODBV4IXB2C2HI3V/
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202004-03

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