Description

G. Glass and D.Truman of Kroll uncovered a serious remote code execution vulnerability in Ghostscript, an open-source interpreter for PostScript and PDF files that triggers code execution when a malicious file is opened. Ghostscript comes standard with most Linux distributions and is used by a number of well-known apps, including LibreOffice, GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, ImageMagick, and the CUPS printing system. The RCE vulnerability in Ghostscript is listed as CVE-2023-3664, has a severity of 9.8, and affects all versions of Ghostscript prior to 10.01.2, the most recent version, as well as open-source Windows apps that use a Ghostscript port. CVE-2023-3664, according to experts, is connected to OS pipes, which let different apps communicate data by passing outputs from one as inputs to another. Further investigation found that the problem stems from Ghostscript's "gp_file_name_reduce()" function, which merges and reduces numerous paths for performance by deleting relative path references. However, providing a specially crafted path to the vulnerable function can bypass validation mechanisms and potentially result in unexpected outcomes and exploitation. Kroll's experts also developed a proof-of-concept attack that is activated when an EPS file is opened in any application that employs Ghostscript. The researchers advised Linux users to switch to Ghostscript version 10.01.2 via their package manager for the greatest level of security, and Kroll provided a Sigma rule on their GitHub repository to aid in the detection of the CVE-2023-3664 issue.