Skip to content
Fencer Intel
high 8.8

CVE-2016-7976 in the critical feed json

The PS Interpreter in Ghostscript 9.18 and 9.20 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via crafted userparams.

published 2017-08-07 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-8824

cvss
8.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
23.5%
EPSS 23.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 97%
public exploits
1
Metasploit

Summary

The PS Interpreter in Ghostscript 9.18 and 9.20 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via crafted userparams.

Patch / fix

  • ghostscript Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 9.19~dfsg-3.1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-7976

  • ghostscript Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 9.10~dfsg-0ubuntu10.5
  • ghostscript Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 9.18~dfsg~0-0ubuntu2.2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2016-7976

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • ghostscript openSUSE Tumbleweed 9.20-2.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10003-1

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-2016-7976 updated cvss 7.1

ghostscript: various userparams allow %pipe% in paths, allowing remote shell

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 ghostscript Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 ghostscript, ghostscript-gtk Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 libgs, ghostscript, ghostscript-gtk, ghostscript-cups Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise 2 ghostscript
    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

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (Metasploit exploit/unix/fileformat/imagemagick_delegate)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

23.45% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 97% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 8.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.8 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

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.