CVE-2023-28879In Artifex Ghostscript through 10.01.0, there is a buffer overflow leading to potential corruption of data internal to the PostScript…
- 9.8CriticalCVSS base score
- 6.3%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 6.3% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- YesPublic exploitsa reference or SSVC says so
Description
In Artifex Ghostscript through 10.01.0, there is a buffer overflow leading to potential corruption of data internal to the PostScript interpreter, in base/sbcp.c. This affects BCPEncode, BCPDecode, TBCPEncode, and TBCPDecode. If the write buffer is filled to one byte less than full, and one then tries to write an escaped character, two bytes are written.
Public exploit
An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. CISA's SSVC rates its exploitation: a proof of concept is public.
Timeline
ID reserved
By mitre
- 4 days later
· 4 days later
Published
- 23 months later
· 23 months later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CISA-ADPADP (enrichment) | 3.1 | Critical9.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | Critical9.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 6.3% · top 6.3% of all CVEs (13 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: poc · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: total
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Critical 9.8.
Affected products
n/a
- affected n/a
References
References10
- https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=706494 (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://git.ghostscript.com/?p=ghostpdl.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=37ed5022cecd584de868933b5b60da2e995b3179 (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://ghostscript.readthedocs.io/en/latest/News.html (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- [debian-lts-announce] 20230404 [SECURITY] [DLA 3381-1] ghostscript security update (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_transferred
- DSA-5383 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_transferred
- FEDORA-2023-f51bc947bb (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_transferred
- [oss-security] 20230412 Ghostscript CVE-2023-28879: "Shell in the Ghost" (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_transferred
- FEDORA-2023-fbf86d8916 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_transferred
- FEDORA-2023-366850fc87 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_transferred
- GLSA-202309-03 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2023-32499 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2023-28879)Record last updated .