CVE-2016-7977

Publication date 6 October 2016

Last updated 25 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

Ghostscript before 9.21 might allow remote attackers to bypass the SAFER mode protection mechanism and consequently read arbitrary files via the use of the .libfile operator in a crafted postscript document.

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
ghostscript	16.10 yakkety	Fixed 9.19~dfsg+1-0ubuntu6.2
	16.04 LTS xenial	Fixed 9.18~dfsg~0-0ubuntu2.2
	14.04 LTS trusty	Fixed 9.10~dfsg-0ubuntu10.5
	12.04 LTS precise	Fixed 9.05~dfsg-0ubuntu4.4

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
ghostscript	Upstream: http://git.ghostscript.com/?p=user/chrisl/ghostpdl.git;h=cf046d2f0fa2c6973c6ca8d582a9b185cc4bd280

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	5.5 · Medium
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	None
User interaction	Required
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	High
Integrity impact	None
Availability impact	None
Vector	CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

References

Related Ubuntu Security Notices (USN)

USN-3148-1
Ghostscript vulnerabilities
2 December 2016