Skip to content
Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2018-16585 json

An issue was discovered in Artifex Ghostscript before 9.24.

published 8y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2018-8392

cvss
7.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.7%
EPSS 1.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 77%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in Artifex Ghostscript before 9.24. The .setdistillerkeys PostScript command is accepted even though it is not intended for use during document processing (e.g., after the startup phase). This leads to memory corruption, allowing remote attackers able to supply crafted PostScript to crash the interpreter or possibly have unspecified other impact. Note: A reputable source believes that the CVE is potentially a duplicate of CVE-2018-15910 as explained in Red Hat bugzilla (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1626193)

Patch / fix

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

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-16585

  • ghostscript Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 9.10~dfsg-0ubuntu10.13
  • ghostscript Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 9.18~dfsg~0-0ubuntu2.9

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-16585

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 SLES 12 SP3, SLES 12 SP2-BCL, SLED 12 SP3 +9 more 9.25-23.13.1
  • 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-2018:2975-2SUSE-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-2018-16585 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-2018-16585 updated cvss 7.0

ghostscript: .setdistillerkeys PostScript command is accepted even though it is not intended for use

  • 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 Enterprise Linux 8 libgs, ghostscript, ghostscript-x11, ghostscript-tools-fonts, ghostscript-tools-dvipdf, ghostscript-tools-printing
    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

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
2y ago

Exploit prediction

1.72% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 77% 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-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

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.