Ghostscript is a PostScript and PDF interpreter used in document rendering and conversion workflows. It processes complex page descriptions, which makes it useful in tools that resize images, flatten PDFs, or convert uploaded files into other formats. In security terms, that power is also a risk: any parser that handles attacker-controlled documents can become a code-execution boundary if it is not tightly isolated.
In real attacks, Ghostscript may be reached through upload pipelines such as image-processing stacks, document generators, or web applications that delegate file conversion to the operating system. Malicious files can try to trigger unsafe interpreter behavior, access unexpected resources, or exploit overly permissive conversion settings. Defenders reduce the risk by patching promptly, disabling unnecessary delegates and formats, running conversion services with minimal privileges, and sandboxing the interpreter so a bad file cannot affect the rest of the server.