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Fencer Vulns
high 7.3

CVE-2018-16863 json

It was found that RHSA-2018:2918 did not fully fix CVE-2018-16509.

published 2018-12-03 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-8654

cvss
7.3
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.2%
EPSS 1.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 69%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

It was found that RHSA-2018:2918 did not fully fix CVE-2018-16509. An attacker could possibly exploit another variant of the flaw and bypass the -dSAFER protection to, for example, execute arbitrary shell commands via a specially crafted PostScript document. This only affects ghostscript 9.07 as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

Patch / fix

  • ghostscript RHEL 7 9.07-31.el7_6.3
  • ghostscript-gtk RHEL 7 9.07-31.el7_6.3
  • ghostscript-cups RHEL 7 9.07-31.el7_6.3

red hat advisories RHSA-2018:3761

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-2018-16863 updated cvss 7.3

ghostscript: incomplete fix for CVE-2018-16509

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client Optional (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode Optional (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM and IBM Power LE (POWER9) Server (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM and IBM Power LE (POWER9) Server Optional (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.3
    +4 more products
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 7) ghostscript 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-gtk 9.07-31.el7_6.3, ghostscript-cups 9.07-31.el7_6.3
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:3761

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

1.25% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 69% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.0 7.3 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L
NVD 3.0 7.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 9.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Affected products

  • Artifex ghostscript

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-184 Incomplete List of Disallowed Inputs
  • CWE-78 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command

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.