What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2019-14869

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 3.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2019-11-15 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-648

Description

A flaw was found in all versions of ghostscript 9.x before 9.50, where the `.charkeys` procedure, where it did not properly secure its privileged calls, enabling scripts to bypass `-dSAFER` restrictions. An attacker could abuse this flaw by creating a specially crafted PostScript file that could escalate privileges within the Ghostscript and access files outside of restricted areas or execute commands.

Affected products

• Artifex Ghostscript: from 9.00 before 9.50 — fixed in 9.50
• Fedoraproject Fedora: 29, 30, 31
• openSUSE Leap: 15.0, 15.1

How to fix

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

References

• http://jvn.jp/en/jp/JVN52486659/index.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00049.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00050.html
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/11/15/1
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2020:0222
• https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=701841
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2019-14869
• https://git.ghostscript.com/?p=ghostpdl.git%3Ba=commitdiff%3Bh=485904772c5f
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/2Q4E3OTDAJRSUCOBTDQO7Y5UTE2FFMLF/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/HC4REO73BEJOJAU7NHFHJECAUAYJUE3H/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/IX55AEDERTDFEZAROKZW64MZRPLINEGI/
• https://seclists.org/bugtraq/2019/Nov/27

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