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Fencer Vulns
medium 4.6

CVE-2002-0838 json

Buffer overflow in (1) gv 3.5.8 and earlier, (2) gvv 1.0.2 and earlier, (3) ggv 1.99.90 and earlier, (4) gnome-gv, and (5) kghostview in kd…

published 2002-10-01 24 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2002-0830

cvss
4.6
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.0%
EPSS 2.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 81%
public exploits
2
Exploit-DB

Summary

Buffer overflow in (1) gv 3.5.8 and earlier, (2) gvv 1.0.2 and earlier, (3) ggv 1.99.90 and earlier, (4) gnome-gv, and (5) kghostview in kdegraphics 2.2.2 and earlier, allows attackers to execute arbitrary code via a malformed (a) PDF or (b) PostScript file, which is processed by an unsafe call to sscanf.

Patch / fix

  • gv Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1:3.5.8-27

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2002-0838

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-2002-0838 updated

security flaw

  • Red Hat Linux 6.2 Red Hat Linux 7.0 Red Hat Linux 7.1 Red Hat Linux 7.2 Red Hat Linux 7.3 Red Hat Linux 8.0
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2002:207
  • Red Hat Linux Advanced Workstation 2.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2002:211
  • Red Hat Powertools 7.0 Red Hat Powertools 7.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2002:212

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

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (EDB-21872)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

2.02% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 81% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-21872 GV 2.x/3.x - '.PDF'/'.PS' File Buffer Overflow (2) local, 2002-09-26
  • EDB-21871 GV 2.x/3.x - '.PDF'/'.PS' File Buffer Overflow (1) local, 2002-09-26
  • securityfocus.com http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/5808 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 4.6 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

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.