Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HSummary
CVE-2025-27835 is a high-severity Classic Buffer Overflow (CWE-120) vulnerability in Artifex Ghostscript. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 21th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary
Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.
CVE-2025-27835 is a buffer overflow vulnerability (CWE-120) discovered in Artifex Ghostscript versions before 10.05.0. The flaw occurs in the psi/zbfont.c component during the conversion of glyphs to Unicode, which can lead to memory corruption when processing malformed input.
The vulnerability has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.8 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H). A local attacker with no privileges can exploit it by tricking a user into processing a specially crafted file with an affected Ghostscript instance, such as via a PDF viewer or command-line invocation. Successful exploitation could allow arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the Ghostscript process, resulting in high impacts to confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Advisories recommend upgrading to Ghostscript 10.05.0 or later to mitigate the issue. Additional details are available in the Ghostscript bug report at https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=708131 and the Debian LTS announcement at https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/04/msg00014.html.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-8088
Vulnerability Data
An issue was discovered in Artifex Ghostscript before 10.05.0. A buffer overflow occurs when converting glyphs to Unicode in psi/zbfont.c.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
—
—
—
V5.2.1
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and analysis can find missing size checks before deployment.
Input validation directly enforces size checks before buffer copies.
Engineering principles require bounds checking and safe buffer handling in design.
Memory protection limits the impact of an overflow once it occurs.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure development practices directly enforce bounds checking and input validation that prevent classic buffer overflows.
Vulnerability identification processes such as code review or scanning detect classic buffer overflows before exploitation.
Routine patching replaces vulnerable code containing unchecked buffer copies with corrected versions.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure coding directly requires bounds-checked memory operations, addressing the root cause of CWE-120.
Security testing in development and acceptance can detect buffer overflows through fuzzing and static analysis, though it does not prevent them at the source.
Secure development life cycle mandates processes that can include input validation and bounds checking to prevent buffer overflows.
Application security requirements can specify input-size validation and safe buffer handling to mitigate classic buffer overflows.
Secure system architecture and engineering principles promote defensive coding patterns that reduce the likelihood of unchecked buffer copies.