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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2018-16509 in the critical feed json

An issue was discovered in Artifex Ghostscript before 9.24.

published 8y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2018-8320

cvss
7.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
92.5%
EPSS 92.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 99.8%
public exploits
2
Metasploit and Exploit-DB

Summary

An issue was discovered in Artifex Ghostscript before 9.24. Incorrect "restoration of privilege" checking during handling of /invalidaccess exceptions could be used by attackers able to supply crafted PostScript to execute code using the "pipe" instruction.

Patch / fix

  • artifex ghostscript 9.24
  • artifex gpl_ghostscript 9.26
  • ghostscript Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 9.25~dfsg-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-16509

  • ghostscript Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 9.10~dfsg-0ubuntu10.13
  • ghostscript Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 9.18~dfsg~0-0ubuntu2.9
  • ghostscript Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 9.22~dfsg+1-0ubuntu1.2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-16509

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 8.70-24.el6_10.2
  • ghostscript-gtk RHEL 6 8.70-24.el6_10.2
  • ghostscript RHEL 7 9.07-29.el7_5.2
  • ghostscript-gtk RHEL 7 9.07-29.el7_5.2
  • ghostscript-cups RHEL 7 9.07-29.el7_5.2

red hat advisories RHSA-2018:3760RHSA-2018:2918

  • ghostscript SLES 12 SP3, SLES 12 SP2-BCL, SLED 12 SP3 +9 more 9.25-23.13.1
  • ghostscript-library SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP3-TERADATA +3 more 8.62-32.47.13.1
  • ghostscript SLE Module for Basesystem 15 9.25-3.6.1
  • libspectre SLE Module for Desktop Applications 15 0.2.8-3.2.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2018:2975-3SUSE-SU-2018:3330-1SUSE-SU-2018:2975-2SUSE-SU-2018:2975-1SUSE-SU-2018:2976-1

  • ghostscript openSUSE Tumbleweed 9.54.0-2.2

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10783-1

Is CVE-2018-16509 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

Check with Fencer

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-2018-16509 updated cvss 7.3

ghostscript: /invalidaccess bypass after failed restore (699654)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 ghostscript
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-29.el7_5.2, ghostscript-cups 9.07-29.el7_5.2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-29.el7_5.2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-29.el7_5.2, ghostscript-cups 9.07-29.el7_5.2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-29.el7_5.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:2918
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 6) ghostscript 8.70-24.el6_10.2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Optional (v. 6) ghostscript-gtk 8.70-24.el6_10.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:3760
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM and IBM Power LE (POWER9) Server (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-29.el7_5.2, ghostscript-cups 9.07-29.el7_5.2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM and IBM Power LE (POWER9) Server Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-29.el7_5.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:2918
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node (v. 6) ghostscript 8.70-24.el6_10.2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node Optional (v. 6) ghostscript-gtk 8.70-24.el6_10.2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) ghostscript 8.70-24.el6_10.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:3760
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-29.el7_5.2, ghostscript-cups 9.07-29.el7_5.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:2918
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 6) ghostscript-gtk 8.70-24.el6_10.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:3760
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-29.el7_5.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:2918
show 5 more
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) ghostscript 8.70-24.el6_10.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:3760
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-29.el7_5.2, ghostscript-cups 9.07-29.el7_5.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:2918
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 6) ghostscript-gtk 8.70-24.el6_10.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:3760
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-29.el7_5.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:2918
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 libgs, ghostscript, ghostscript-x11, ghostscript-tools-fonts, ghostscript-tools-dvipdf, ghostscript-tools-printing Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.2 mediawiki Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.3 mediawiki Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.4 mediawiki Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.5 mediawiki Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.6 mediawiki
    +6 more products
    Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.7 mediawiki Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.9 mediawiki Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.10 mediawiki Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 mediawiki Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise 3.0 mediawiki Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise 3.1 mediawiki
    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/multi/fileformat/ghostscript_failed_restore)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

92.50% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

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 9.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

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.