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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2022-2085 json

A NULL pointer dereference vulnerability was found in Ghostscript, which occurs when it tries to render a large number of bits in memory.

published 2022-06-16 4 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2022-34375

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.4%
EPSS 1.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 72%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A NULL pointer dereference vulnerability was found in Ghostscript, which occurs when it tries to render a large number of bits in memory. When allocating a buffer device, it relies on an init_device_procs defined for the device that uses it as a prototype that depends upon the number of bits per pixel. For bpp > 64, mem_x_device is used and does not have an init_device_procs defined. This flaw allows an attacker to parse a large number of bits (more than 64 bits per pixel), which triggers a NULL pointer dereference flaw, causing an application to crash.

Patch / fix

  • ghostscript Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 9.56.0~dfsg-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2022-2085

  • ghostscript Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 9.55.0~dfsg1-0ubuntu5.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2022-2085

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

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-2022-2085 updated cvss 5.3

ghostscript: Null pointer dereference in gx_default_create_buf_device()

  • 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

Exploit prediction

1.41% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 72% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • bugs.ghostscript.com https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=704945 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/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

  • n/a GhostScript

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.