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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2012-4875

Severity High
Score 9.3/10

Summary

Heap-based buffer overflow in gdevwpr2.c in Ghostscript 9.04, when processing the OutputFile device parameter, allows user-assisted remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a long file name in a PostScript document. NOTE: as of 20120314, the developer was not able to reproduce the issue and disputed it

  • MEDIUM
  • NETWORK
  • NONE
  • COMPLETE
  • COMPLETE
  • COMPLETE

CWE-119 - Buffer Overflow

Buffer overflow attacks involve data transit and operations exceeding the restricted memory buffer, thereby corrupting or overwriting data in adjacent memory locations. Such overflow allows the attacker to run arbitrary code or manipulate the existing code to cause privilege escalation, data breach, denial of service, system crash and even complete system compromise. Given that languages such as C and C++ lack default safeguards against overwriting or accessing data in their memory, applications utilizing these languages are most susceptible to buffer overflows attacks.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published