Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2020-27778 json

A flaw was found in Poppler in the way certain PDF files were converted into HTML.

published 2020-12-03 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2020-20282

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.0%
EPSS 2.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 80%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A flaw was found in Poppler in the way certain PDF files were converted into HTML. A remote attacker could exploit this flaw by providing a malicious PDF file that, when processed by the 'pdftohtml' program, would crash the application causing a denial of service.

Patch / fix

  • freedesktop poppler 0.76.0
  • poppler Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 0.85.0-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-27778

  • poppler Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 0.41.0-0ubuntu1.15
  • poppler Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 0.62.0-2ubuntu2.11

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2020-27778

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

  • evince RHEL 8 3.28.4-11.el8
  • poppler RHEL 8 20.11.0-2.el8
  • evince-libs RHEL 8 3.28.4-11.el8
  • poppler-cpp RHEL 8 20.11.0-2.el8
  • poppler-qt5 RHEL 8 20.11.0-2.el8
  • poppler-glib RHEL 8 20.11.0-2.el8
  • poppler-utils RHEL 8 20.11.0-2.el8
  • evince-nautilus RHEL 8 3.28.4-11.el8

red hat advisories RHSA-2021:1881

  • poppler SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 0.24.4-14.20.2
  • poppler SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5, SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 0.43.0-16.19.3
  • poppler-qt SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5, SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 0.43.0-16.19.3
  • poppler SLES for SAP 15 SP1, SLES for SAP 15, SLES 15-LTSS +8 more 0.62.0-4.6.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2022:1724-1SUSE-SU-2022:1723-1SUSE-SU-2021:3854-1

  • poppler openSUSE Leap 15.3 0.62.0-4.6.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2021:3854-1

  • poppler-cpp AlmaLinux 8 20.11.0-2.el8
  • poppler-qt5 AlmaLinux 8 20.11.0-2.el8

almalinux advisories ALSA-2021:1881

  • evince Rocky Linux 8 3.28.4-11.el8
  • poppler Rocky Linux 8 20.11.0-2.el8

rocky linux advisories RLSA-2021:1881

  • poppler Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +10 more 0.76.0-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2020-27778

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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-2020-27778 updated cvss 7.5

poppler: pdftohtml: access to uninitialized pointer could lead to DoS

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 poppler 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
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat CodeReady Linux Builder (v. 8) poppler-cpp 20.11.0-2.el8, poppler-qt5 20.11.0-2.el8 Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 8) evince 3.28.4-11.el8, poppler 20.11.0-2.el8, evince-libs 3.28.4-11.el8, poppler-glib 20.11.0-2.el8, poppler-utils 20.11.0-2.el8, evince-nautilus 3.28.4-11.el8, +1 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2021:1881

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

1.98% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 80% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • bugzilla.redhat.com https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1900712 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
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Affected products

  • n/a poppler

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-824 Access of Uninitialized Pointer

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.