CVE-2023-28879

Deeper analysis

CVE-2023-28879 is a buffer overflow vulnerability in Artifex Ghostscript through version 10.01.0, located in base/sbcp.c. It affects the BCPEncode, BCPDecode, TBCPEncode, and TBCPDecode functions within the PostScript interpreter. The flaw occurs when a write buffer reaches one byte less than capacity and an escaped character is subsequently written, resulting in two bytes being written and potential corruption of internal interpreter data. The issue is tracked under CWE-787 and carries a CVSS 3.1 score of 9.8.

Remote attackers without authentication or user interaction can exploit the vulnerability over a network to corrupt interpreter state, which may lead to impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Successful exploitation requires an attacker to supply input that triggers the affected encoding or decoding routines during PostScript processing.

Advisories and patches referenced in the Ghostscript commit history, Debian LTS announcements, and oss-security lists indicate that the issue is resolved in later releases, with the fix available via the referenced git commit and updated packages. The EPSS score reached a peak of 0.3422 with a current value of 0.2776, indicating moderate post-disclosure interest in exploitation.