CVE-2023-38039

Publication date 13 September 2023

Last updated 4 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Medium

Why this priority?

Cvss 3 Severity Score

7.5 · High

Score breakdown

Description

When curl retrieves an HTTP response, it stores the incoming headers so that they can be accessed later via the libcurl headers API. However, curl did not have a limit in how many or how large headers it would accept in a response, allowing a malicious server to stream an endless series of headers and eventually cause curl to run out of heap memory.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Package Ubuntu Release Status
curl 24.04 LTS noble
Fixed 8.2.1-1ubuntu3
23.10 mantic
Fixed 8.2.1-1ubuntu3
23.04 lunar
Fixed 7.88.1-8ubuntu2.2
22.04 LTS jammy
Not affected
20.04 LTS focal
Not affected
18.04 LTS bionic
Not affected
16.04 LTS xenial
Not affected
14.04 LTS trusty
Not affected

Notes

alexmurray

Vulnerable code exists since 7.83.0 but was an experimental feature not enabled by default and only enabled in 7.84.0. Fixed in upstream release 8.3.0.

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package Patch details
curl

Severity score breakdown

Parameter Value
Base score 7.5 · High
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Scope Unchanged
Confidentiality None
Integrity impact None
Availability impact High
Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References

Related Ubuntu Security Notices (USN)

Other references