CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-15900 — A memory corruption issue was found in Artifex Ghostscript 9.50 and 9.52

Critical CVSS 9.8

A memory corruption issue was found in Artifex Ghostscript 9.50 and 9.52. Use of a non-standard PostScript operator can allow overriding of file access controls. The 'rsearch' calculation for the 'post' size resulted in a size that was too large, and could underflow to max uint32_t. This was fixed in commit 5d499272b95a6b890a1397e11d20937de000d31b.

Severity: Critical
CVSS: 9.8 (3.1)
Published: 2020-07-28
CISA KEV: Not currently listed
Ecosystem: software/application
Weaknesses: CWE-191, CWE-787

Affected products

artifex / ghostscript / 9.50
artifex / ghostscript / 9.52
canonical / ubuntu_linux / 20.04
opensuse / leap / 15.1
opensuse / leap / 15.2

Matched remediation archetype

Buffer bounds, memory safety, and memory corruption

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

Identify affected native-code versions, build flags, architectures, parsers, codecs, drivers, and input paths in all shipped artifacts.
Determine whether untrusted data reaches the affected routine and the process privilege, sandbox, and network exposure.
Confirm statically linked, vendored, firmware, and platform-provided copies, not only package-manager records.

Remediate safely

Apply the maintained upstream correction or replace the affected component, then rebuild every dependent artifact from clean inputs.
Adopt bounds-checked interfaces, validated sizes and integer conversions, clear ownership, and memory-safe components where practical.
Enable supported compiler and runtime hardening and add sanitized tests and fuzz regression seeds derived from non-weaponized fixtures.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.