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Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2020-23804 json

Uncontrolled Recursion in pdfinfo, and pdftops in poppler 0.89.0 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service via crafted input.

published 2023-08-22 3 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2020-16544

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.2%
EPSS 1.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 67%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Uncontrolled Recursion in pdfinfo, and pdftops in poppler 0.89.0 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service via crafted input.

Patch / fix

  • poppler Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 20.09.0-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-23804

  • poppler Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 0.86.1-0ubuntu1.4
  • poppler Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 0.41.0-0ubuntu1.16+esm4
  • poppler Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS 0.62.0-2ubuntu2.14+esm2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2020-23804

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

  • poppler SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES for SAP 15 SP2, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS +10 more 0.79.0-150200.3.21.2
  • poppler SLES for SAP 15 SP1, SLES 15 SP1-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP1-LTSS +1 more 0.62.0-150000.4.25.2
  • poppler SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5, SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 0.43.0-16.35.2
  • poppler-qt SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5, SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 0.43.0-16.35.2
  • poppler SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 0.24.4-14.36.2

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2023:3998-1SUSE-SU-2023:3983-1SUSE-SU-2023:3982-1SUSE-SU-2023:3981-1

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-2020-23804 updated cvss 7.5

poppler: uncontrolled recursion in pdfinfo and pdftops

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 poppler, poppler-qt, poppler-qt4, poppler-glib, poppler-utils Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 poppler, poppler-qt, poppler-cpp, poppler-glib, poppler-demos, poppler-utils, +4 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 poppler, poppler-cpp, poppler-qt5, poppler-glib, poppler-utils, cups-container, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 poppler, poppler-cpp, poppler-qt5, poppler-glib, poppler-utils, cups-container, +1 more
    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

1.15% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 67% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • gitlab.freedesktop.org https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/issues/936 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Classification

Weakness

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.