CVE-2018-19478 Denial of service in n/a

Medium 5.5 Published 2 Jan 2019 Updated 5 Aug 2024

Attackers can cause denial of service by providing a crafted PDF file that triggers excessive computation in Ghostscript.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: A user has to click or open something
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2018-19478?

CVE-2018-19478 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Artifex Ghostscript, published on 2 Jan 2019. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

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

Weakness: CWE-20

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-19478?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Artifex Ghostscript, Debian Debian Linux.

How do I fix CVE-2018-19478?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2018-19478 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-19478 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Artifex Ghostscript vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2018-19478, GHSA-fcmg-pjrg-hphj, UBUNTU-CVE-2018-19478.