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Fencer Intel
medium 6.5

CVE-2009-5078 json

contrib/pdfmark/pdfroff.sh in GNU troff (aka groff) before 1.21 launches the Ghostscript program without the -dSAFER option, which allows r…

published 15y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2009-5033

cvss
6.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.3%
EPSS 2.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 83%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

contrib/pdfmark/pdfroff.sh in GNU troff (aka groff) before 1.21 launches the Ghostscript program without the -dSAFER option, which allows remote attackers to create, overwrite, rename, or delete arbitrary files via a crafted document.

Patch / fix

  • groff Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.20.1-5

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2009-5078

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2009-5078 updated cvss 1.9

groff: pdfroff.sh launches Ghostscript without -dSAFER

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

2.31% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 83% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 6.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L
NVD 2.0 6.4 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.