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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.8

CVE-2020-36773 json

Artifex Ghostscript before 9.53.0 has an out-of-bounds write and use-after-free in devices/vector/gdevtxtw.c (for txtwrite) because a singl…

published 2024-02-04 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2020-24214

cvss
9.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.9%
EPSS 0.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 59%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Artifex Ghostscript before 9.53.0 has an out-of-bounds write and use-after-free in devices/vector/gdevtxtw.c (for txtwrite) because a single character code in a PDF document can map to more than one Unicode code point (e.g., for a ligature).

Patch / fix

  • ghostscript Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 9.53.0~dfsg-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-36773

  • ghostscript SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5, SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 9.52-23.71.1
  • ghostscript SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 9.52-150000.185.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:0921-1SUSE-SU-2024:0920-1

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-2020-36773 updated cvss 9.8

Ghostscript: out-of-bounds write and use-after-free in devices/vector/gdevtxtw.c (for txtwrite)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 ghostscript, ghostscript-gtk Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 libgs, ghostscript, ghostscript-gtk, ghostscript-cups Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 libgs, ghostscript, ghostscript-x11, ghostscript-tools-fonts, ghostscript-tools-dvipdf, ghostscript-tools-printing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 libgs, ghostscript, ghostscript-x11, ghostscript-tools-fonts, ghostscript-tools-dvipdf, ghostscript-tools-printing
    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

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.88% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 59% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CNA 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/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.