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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2016-8602 json

The .sethalftone5 function in psi/zht2.c in Ghostscript before 9.21 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash…

published 2017-04-14 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-9449

cvss
7.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.2%
EPSS 3.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 88%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The .sethalftone5 function in psi/zht2.c in Ghostscript before 9.21 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via a crafted Postscript document that calls .sethalftone5 with an empty operand stack.

Patch / fix

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

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-8602

  • 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-2016-8602

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 RHEL 6 8.70-21.el6_8.1
  • ghostscript-gtk RHEL 6 8.70-21.el6_8.1
  • ghostscript RHEL 7 9.07-20.el7_3.1
  • ghostscript-gtk RHEL 7 9.07-20.el7_3.1
  • ghostscript-cups RHEL 7 9.07-20.el7_3.1

red hat advisories RHSA-2017:0014RHSA-2017:0013

  • ghostscript-library SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4, SLE Software Development Kit 11 SP4 8.62-32.41.1
  • ghostscript SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES 12 SP1, SLED 12 SP1 +1 more 9.15-14.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2016:2723-1SUSE-SU-2016:2654-1

  • 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-2016-8602 updated cvss 5.8

ghostscript: check for sufficient params in .sethalftone5

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 ghostscript Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise 2 ghostscript
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-20.el7_3.1, ghostscript-cups 9.07-20.el7_3.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-20.el7_3.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-20.el7_3.1, ghostscript-cups 9.07-20.el7_3.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-20.el7_3.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0013
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 6) ghostscript 8.70-21.el6_8.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Optional (v. 6) ghostscript-gtk 8.70-21.el6_8.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node (v. 6) ghostscript 8.70-21.el6_8.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node Optional (v. 6) ghostscript-gtk 8.70-21.el6_8.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) ghostscript 8.70-21.el6_8.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0014
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-20.el7_3.1, ghostscript-cups 9.07-20.el7_3.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0013
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 6) ghostscript-gtk 8.70-21.el6_8.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0014
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-20.el7_3.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0013
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) ghostscript 8.70-21.el6_8.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0014
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-20.el7_3.1, ghostscript-cups 9.07-20.el7_3.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0013
show 2 more
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 6) ghostscript-gtk 8.70-21.el6_8.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0014
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-20.el7_3.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0013

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

3.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 88% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 7.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/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-704 Incorrect Type Conversion or Cast

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.