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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.3

CVE-2016-9601 json

ghostscript before version 9.21 is vulnerable to a heap based buffer overflow that was found in the ghostscript jbig2_decode_gray_scale_ima…

published 2018-04-23 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-10405

cvss
5.3
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.7%
EPSS 1.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 77%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

ghostscript before version 9.21 is vulnerable to a heap based buffer overflow that was found in the ghostscript jbig2_decode_gray_scale_image function which is used to decode halftone segments in a JBIG2 image. A document (PostScript or PDF) with an embedded, specially crafted, jbig2 image could trigger a segmentation fault in ghostscript.

Patch / fix

  • artifex gpl_ghostscript 9.21
  • jbig2dec Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 0.13-4

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-9601

  • jbig2dec Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 0.11+20120125-1ubuntu1.1
  • jbig2dec Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 0.12+20150918-1ubuntu0.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2016-9601

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-library SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4, SLE Software Development Kit 11 SP4 8.62-32.47.10.1
  • ghostscript-library SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4, SLE Software Development Kit 11 SP4 8.62-32.47.7.1
  • ghostscript SLES for SAP 12 SP2, SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES for SAP 12 +8 more 9.15-22.1
  • ghostscript SLES for SAP 12 SP2, SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES for Raspberry Pi 12 SP2 +6 more 9.15-20.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2018:1369-1SUSE-SU-2018:1140-1SUSE-SU-2017:1404-1SUSE-SU-2017:1138-1

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-2016-9601 updated cvss 5.3

ghostscript: Heap-buffer overflow due to Integer overflow in jbig2_image_new function

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 libgs, ghostscript, ghostscript-gtk, ghostscript-cups
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise 2 ghostscript
    under investigation
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 ghostscript Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 ghostscript, ghostscript-gtk
    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

1.71% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 77% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.0 5.3 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
NVD 3.0 5.5 CVSS:3.0/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

Affected products

  • unspecified ghostscript

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-190 Integer Overflow or Wraparound
  • CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns 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.