CVE-2020-36023

Exp

An issue was discovered in freedesktop poppler version 20.12.1, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (DoS) via crafted .pdf file to FoFiType1C::cvtGlyph function.

Published: 2023-08-11 Last update: 2026-06-16 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2020-36023 is rated High Exploit Risk (61.2/100): CVSS Medium severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.93%). Core evidence: 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Mandatory action: Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Public exploit references (Exploit-DB) for CVE-2020-36023

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2020-36023

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 0.25% 0.93% +0.67%
2 2026-06-07 0.07% 0.25% +0.18%
3 2025-11-21 0.07%

Full EPSS history (10 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2020-36023

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
2.8 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2020-36023

OS Trackers for CVE-2020-36023

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2020-36023 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (poppler), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2020-36023
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-36023
suse medium CVE-2020-36023 severity moderate: SUSE including 36 source package names (libpoppler-cpp0, libpoppler-cpp0-0.43.0-16.40.1, …), 166 product×package rows across 30 product lines (SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP4-ESPOS, SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS, … (30 product lines)): Known Not Affected 112, Fixed 54. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-36023/
ubuntu medium CVE-2020-36023 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (poppler), 7 status rows across 7 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, lunar, trusty, upstream, xenial): released 4, not-affected 2, ignored 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2020-36023

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2020-36023

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
freedesktop poppler 20.12.1 cpe:2.3:a:freedesktop:poppler:20.12.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2020-36023

cvelogic Threat Intelligence