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Fencer Intel
medium 5.5

CVE-2020-16307 json

A null pointer dereference vulnerability in devices/vector/gdevtxtw.c and psi/zbfont.c of Artifex Software GhostScript v9.50 allows a remot…

published 6y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2020-8268

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.8%
EPSS 1.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 78%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A null pointer dereference vulnerability in devices/vector/gdevtxtw.c and psi/zbfont.c of Artifex Software GhostScript v9.50 allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service via a crafted postscript file. This is fixed in v9.51.

Patch / fix

  • ghostscript Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 9.51~dfsg-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-16307

  • ghostscript Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 9.26~dfsg+0-0ubuntu0.16.04.13
  • ghostscript Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 9.26~dfsg+0-0ubuntu0.18.04.13
  • ghostscript Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 9.50~dfsg-5ubuntu4.2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2020-16307

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 8 9.27-1.el8
  • libgs RHEL 8 9.27-1.el8
  • ghostscript-x11 RHEL 8 9.27-1.el8
  • ghostscript-tools-fonts RHEL 8 9.27-1.el8
  • ghostscript-tools-dvipdf RHEL 8 9.27-1.el8
  • ghostscript-tools-printing RHEL 8 9.27-1.el8

red hat advisories RHSA-2021:1852

  • ghostscript AlmaLinux 8 9.27-1.el8
  • libgs AlmaLinux 8 9.27-1.el8
  • ghostscript-x11 AlmaLinux 8 9.27-1.el8
  • ghostscript-tools-fonts AlmaLinux 8 9.27-1.el8
  • ghostscript-tools-dvipdf AlmaLinux 8 9.27-1.el8
  • ghostscript-tools-printing AlmaLinux 8 9.27-1.el8

almalinux advisories ALSA-2021:1852

  • ghostscript Rocky Linux 8 9.27-1.el8
  • ghostscript Rocky Linux 8 9.27-11.el8

rocky linux advisories RLSA-2021:1852

  • ghostscript Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +9 more 9.51-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2020-16307

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

Is CVE-2020-16307 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.

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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-2020-16307 updated cvss 5.5

ghostscript: NULL pointer dereference in devices/vector/gdevtxtw.c and psi/zbfont.c could result in a DoS

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 ghostscript Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 ghostscript, ghostscript-gtk
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 libgs, ghostscript, ghostscript-gtk, ghostscript-cups
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat CodeReady Linux Builder (v. 8) ghostscript-tools-fonts 9.27-1.el8, ghostscript-tools-dvipdf 9.27-1.el8, ghostscript-tools-printing 9.27-1.el8 Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 8) libgs 9.27-1.el8, ghostscript 9.27-1.el8, ghostscript-x11 9.27-1.el8
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2021:1852
  • Red Hat 3scale API Management Platform 2 ghostscript
    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

1.78% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 78% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • bugs.ghostscript.com https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=701822 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/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

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.