CVE-2023-23916
MEDIUM6.5EPSS 0.07%curl - security update
Published: 2/23/2023Modified: 4/28/2026
Description
An allocation of resources without limits or throttling vulnerability exists in curl <v7.88.0 based on the "chained" HTTP compression algorithms, meaning that a server response can be compressed multiple times and potentially with differentalgorithms. The number of acceptable "links" in this "decompression chain" wascapped, but the cap was implemented on a per-header basis allowing a maliciousserver to insert a virtually unlimited number of compression steps simply byusing many headers. The use of such a decompression chain could result in a "malloc bomb", making curl end up spending enormous amounts of allocated heap memory, or trying to and returning out of memory errors.
Affected packages (4)
- Alpine/curlfrom 0, < 7.79.1-r5
- Debian/curlfrom 0, < 7.74.0-1.3+deb11u7
- Debian/curlfrom 0, < 7.64.0-4+deb10u5
- Debian/curlfrom 0, < 7.74.0-1.3+deb11u7
CVSS scores
| Source | Version | Severity | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| osv | CVSS 3.1 | MEDIUM6.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |