CVE-2019-18397: Debian Linux

High severity, CVSS 7.8. EPSS: 2.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A buffer overflow in the fribidi_get_par_embedding_levels_ex() function in lib/fribidi-bidi.c of GNU FriBidi through 1.0.7 allows an attacker to cause a denial of service or possibly execute arbitrary code by delivering crafted text content to a user, when this content is then rendered by an application that uses FriBidi for text layout calculations. Examples include any GNOME or GTK+ based application that uses Pango for text layout, as this internally uses FriBidi for bidirectional text layout. For example, the attacker can construct a crafted text file to be opened in GEdit, or a crafted IRC message to be viewed in HexChat.

Affected products

• Debian Debian Linux: version 10.0 only; version 8.0 only; version 9.0 only
• GNU Fribidi: from 1.0.0, up to and including 1.0.7

Published 2019-11-13. Last modified 2026-06-17.