CVE-2022-2085

Publication date 16 June 2022

Last updated 25 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

A NULL pointer dereference vulnerability was found in Ghostscript, which occurs when it tries to render a large number of bits in memory. When allocating a buffer device, it relies on an init_device_procs defined for the device that uses it as a prototype that depends upon the number of bits per pixel. For bpp > 64, mem_x_device is used and does not have an init_device_procs defined. This flaw allows an attacker to parse a large number of bits (more than 64 bits per pixel), which triggers a NULL pointer dereference flaw, causing an application to crash.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
ghostscript	22.10 kinetic	Not affected
	22.04 LTS jammy	Fixed 9.55.0~dfsg1-0ubuntu5.1
	21.10 impish	Ignored end of life
	20.04 LTS focal	Not affected
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not affected
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not affected

Notes

mdeslaur

code in focal and earlier doesn't look vulnerable to this issue

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
ghostscript	Upstream: https://git.ghostscript.com/?p=ghostpdl.git;h=ae1061d948d88667bdf51d47d918c4684d0f67df

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	5.5 · Medium
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	None
User interaction	Required
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	None
Integrity impact	None
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H