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.
Advisories
Source ID Title
Debian DLA Debian DLA DLA-3341-1 curl security update
Debian DSA Debian DSA DSA-5365-1 curl security update
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-5891-1 curl vulnerabilities
Fixes

Solution

No solution given by the vendor.


Workaround

No workaround given by the vendor.

History

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 19:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'poc', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: hackerone

Published:

Updated: 2025-03-12T18:25:23.845Z

Reserved: 2023-01-19T00:00:00.000Z

Link: CVE-2023-23916

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2024-08-02T10:42:26.847Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Modified

Published: 2023-02-23T20:15:13.777

Modified: 2025-03-12T19:15:36.367

Link: CVE-2023-23916

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Moderate

Publid Date: 2023-02-15T00:00:00Z

Links: CVE-2023-23916 - Bugzilla

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.