CVE-2018-16509: Artifex Ghostscript

High severity, CVSS 7.8. EPSS: 92.5% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

An issue was discovered in Artifex Ghostscript before 9.24. Incorrect "restoration of privilege" checking during handling of /invalidaccess exceptions could be used by attackers able to supply crafted PostScript to execute code using the "pipe" instruction.

Affected products

• Artifex Ghostscript: before 9.24 (fixed in 9.24)
• Artifex Gpl Ghostscript: before 9.26 (fixed in 9.26)
• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: version 14.04 only; version 16.04 only; version 18.04 only
• Debian Debian Linux: version 8.0 only; version 9.0 only
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop: version 6.0 only; version 7.0 only
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server: version 6.0 only; version 7.0 only
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Eus: version 7.5 only
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation: version 6.0 only; version 7.0 only

Published 2018-09-05. Last modified 2026-06-17.