CVE-2023-38546

Published Oct 18, 2023

Last updated 6 months ago

CVSS low 3.7
Curl
Libcurl

Overview

Description
This flaw allows an attacker to insert cookies at will into a running program using libcurl, if the specific series of conditions are met. libcurl performs transfers. In its API, an application creates "easy handles" that are the individual handles for single transfers. libcurl provides a function call that duplicates en easy handle called [curl_easy_duphandle](https://curl.se/libcurl/c/curl_easy_duphandle.html). If a transfer has cookies enabled when the handle is duplicated, the cookie-enable state is also cloned - but without cloning the actual cookies. If the source handle did not read any cookies from a specific file on disk, the cloned version of the handle would instead store the file name as `none` (using the four ASCII letters, no quotes). Subsequent use of the cloned handle that does not explicitly set a source to load cookies from would then inadvertently load cookies from a file named `none` - if such a file exists and is readable in the current directory of the program using libcurl. And if using the correct file format of course.
Source
support@hackerone.com
NVD status
Modified
Products
libcurl

Risk scores

CVSS 3.1

Type
Primary
Base score
3.7
Impact score
1.4
Exploitability score
2.2
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
Severity
LOW

Weaknesses

nvd@nist.gov
NVD-CWE-noinfo

Social media

Hype score
Not currently trending

Configurations

  1. libcurl can in some circumstances reuse the wrong connection when asked to do an Negotiate-authenticated HTTP or HTTPS request. libcurl features a pool of recent connections so that subsequent requests can reuse an existing connection to avoid overhead. When reusing a connection a range of criterion must first be met. Due to a logical error in the code, a request that was issued by an application could wrongfully reuse an existing connection to the same server that was authenticated using different credentials. One underlying reason being that Negotiate sometimes authenticates *connections* and not *requests*, contrary to how HTTP is designed to work. An application that allows Negotiate authentication to a server (that responds wanting Negotiate) with `user1:password1` and then does another operation to the same server also using Negotiate but with `user2:password2` (while the previous connection is still alive) - the second request wrongly reused the same connection and since it then sees that the Negotiate negotiation is already made, it just sends the request over that connection thinking it uses the user2 credentials when it is in fact still using the connection authenticated for user1... The set of authentication methods to use is set with `CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH`. Applications can disable libcurl's reuse of connections and thus mitigate this problem, by using one of the following libcurl options to alter how connections are or are not reused: `CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT`, `CURLOPT_MAXCONNECTS` and `CURLMOPT_MAX_HOST_CONNECTIONS` (if using the curl_multi API).CVE-2026-1965