CVE-2022-37050 — In Poppler 22

In Poppler 22.07.0, PDFDoc::savePageAs in PDFDoc.c callows attackers to cause a denial-of-service (application crashes with SIGABRT) by crafting a PDF file in which the xref data structure is mishandled in getCatalog processing. Note that this vulnerability is caused by the incom

01What is this vulnerability?

In Poppler 22.07.0, PDFDoc::savePageAs in PDFDoc.c callows attackers to cause a denial-of-service (application crashes with SIGABRT) by crafting a PDF file in which the xref data structure is mishandled in getCatalog processing. Note that this vulnerability is caused by the incomplete patch of CVE-2018-20662.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / n/a	n/a

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

08Timeline

• Published: 2023-08-22T00:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2025-11-03T19:27:17.566Z

09References

• gitlab.freedesktop.org — https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/issues/1274
• gitlab.freedesktop.org — https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/commit/dcd5bd8238ea448addd102ff…
• lists.debian.org — https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/10/msg00022.html