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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2018-16802 json

An issue was discovered in Artifex Ghostscript before 9.25.

published 2018-09-10 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-8602

cvss
7.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.1%
EPSS 2.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 81%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in Artifex Ghostscript before 9.25. Incorrect "restoration of privilege" checking when running out of stack during exception handling could be used by attackers able to supply crafted PostScript to execute code using the "pipe" instruction. This is due to an incomplete fix for CVE-2018-16509.

Patch / fix

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

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-16802

  • 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-2018-16802

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 7 9.07-31.el7_6.6
  • ghostscript-gtk RHEL 7 9.07-31.el7_6.6
  • ghostscript-cups RHEL 7 9.07-31.el7_6.6

red hat advisories RHSA-2018:3834

  • 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

  • ghostscript Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +17 more 9.25-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2018-16802

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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-2018-16802 updated cvss 7.3

ghostscript: Incorrect "restoration of privilege" checking when running out of stack during exception handling

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.6, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.6, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM and IBM Power LE (POWER9) Server (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.6, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM and IBM Power LE (POWER9) Server Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.6
    +4 more products
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.6, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.6, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 7) ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.6
    fixed: vendor fix “Please refer to the "Mitigation" section of CVE-2018-16509 : https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2018-16509” RHSA-2018:3834
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 ghostscript Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 ghostscript, ghostscript-gtk 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

Exploit prediction

2.09% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 81% 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

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.