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Fencer Intel
medium 5.5

CVE-2018-19478 json

In Artifex Ghostscript before 9.26, a carefully crafted PDF file can trigger an extremely long running computation when parsing the file.

published 7y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2018-11167

cvss
5.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.9%
EPSS 1.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 79%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In Artifex Ghostscript before 9.26, a carefully crafted PDF file can trigger an extremely long running computation when parsing the file.

Patch / fix

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

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-19478

  • ghostscript Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 9.26~dfsg+0-0ubuntu0.14.04.1
  • ghostscript Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 9.26~dfsg+0-0ubuntu0.16.04.1
  • ghostscript Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 9.26~dfsg+0-0ubuntu0.18.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-19478

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

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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-2018-19478 updated cvss 5.3

ghostscript: Attempting to open a carefully crafted PDF file results in long-running computation (699856)

  • 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
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Please refer to the "Mitigation" section of CVE-2018-16509 : https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2018-16509”

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

1.89% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 79% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 5.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/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.