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CVE-2018-16539

20
FAUCET Score

CVE-2018-16539 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Artifex Ghostscript versions prior to 9.24, also affecting Canonical, Debian, and Red Hat distributions. It allows an attacker to disclose sensitive file contents on a system by supplying a specially crafted PostScript file, exploiting incorrect access checking in temporary file handling. The attack requires user interaction (UI:R) and local access (AV:L), but does not impact integrity or availability. There is no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB), or significant community discussion or media coverage.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
< 9.24CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:artifex:ghostscript:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
14.04CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:*:*:*:lts:*:*:*
16.04CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:*:*:*:lts:*:*:*
18.04CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:*:*:*:lts:*:*:*
8.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:8.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.0

5.5MEDIUM

CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
REQUIRED
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
NONE
Availability Impact
NONE
Exploitability Score
1.8
Impact Score
3.6
CvssVersion
3.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
1.44%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
70.5%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0144 is in the 81st percentile among its peer group of 5,765 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.0 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.1 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.1 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (3)

redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7Fixed in: ghostscript-0:9.07-31.el7_6.1
View patch
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Fixed in: ghostscript
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6Fixed in: ghostscript

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2018-16539Moderate

ghostscript: incorrect access checking in temp file handling to disclose contents of files (699658)

Sep 6, 2018

References

git.ghostscript.com
access.redhat.com / errata/RHSA-2018:3650
Third Party Advisory
bugs.ghostscript.com / show_bug.cgi
Issue TrackingPermissions RequiredVendor Advisory
lists.debian.org / debian-lts-announce/2018/09/msg00015.html
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
security.gentoo.org / glsa/201811-12
Third Party Advisory
usn.ubuntu.com / 3768-1
Third Party Advisory
artifex.com / news/ghostscript-security-resolved
PatchVendor Advisory
debian.org / security/2018/dsa-4288
Third Party Advisory