CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2016-7978

Use After Free

Published: May 23, 2017 | Modified: Apr 20, 2025
CVSS 3.x
9.8
CRITICAL
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
7.5 HIGH
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V2
5.1 MODERATE
AV:N/AC:H/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V3
5.8 MODERATE
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L
Ubuntu
MEDIUM

Use-after-free vulnerability in Ghostscript 9.20 might allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via vectors related to a reference leak in .setdevice.

Weakness

The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory “belongs” to the code that operates on the new pointer.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Ghostscript Artifex 9.20 (including) 9.20 (including)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 RedHat ghostscript-0:9.07-20.el7_3.1 *
Ghostscript Ubuntu devel *
Ghostscript Ubuntu esm-infra/xenial *
Ghostscript Ubuntu precise *
Ghostscript Ubuntu trusty *
Ghostscript Ubuntu xenial *
Ghostscript Ubuntu yakkety *

Potential Mitigations

References