Libcurl

When libcurl is asked to perform automatic gzip decompression of content-encoded HTTP responses with the `CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING` option, **using zlib 1.2.0.3 or older**, an attacker-controlled integer overflow would make libcurl perform a buffer overflow.

Published: 2025-02-05T09:18:20.468Z
Updated: 2025-06-12T16:04:29.956Z

libcurl's ASN1 parser code has the `GTime2str()` function, used for parsing an ASN.1 Generalized Time field. If given an syntactically incorrect field, the parser might end up using -1 for the length of the *time fraction*, leading to a `strlen()` getting performed on a pointer to a heap buffer area that is not (purposely) null terminated. This flaw most likely leads to a crash, but can also lead to heap contents getting returned to the application when [CURLINFO_CERTINFO](https://curl.se/libcurl/c/CURLINFO_CERTINFO.html) is used.

Published: 2024-07-31T08:08:14.585Z
Updated: 2025-11-03T22:32:51.400Z

libcurl's ASN1 parser has this utf8asn1str() function used for parsing an ASN.1 UTF-8 string. Itcan detect an invalid field and return error. Unfortunately, when doing so it also invokes `free()` on a 4 byte localstack buffer. Most modern malloc implementations detect this error and immediately abort. Some however accept the input pointer and add that memory to its list of available chunks. This leads to the overwriting of nearby stack memory. The content of the overwrite is decided by the `free()` implementation; likely to be memory pointers and a set of flags. The most likely outcome of exploting this flaw is a crash, although it cannot be ruled out that more serious results can be had in special circumstances.

Published: 2024-07-24T07:29:50.003Z
Updated: 2025-02-13T17:54:41.039Z

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.

Published: 2023-10-18T03:51:31.276Z
Updated: 2026-07-14T12:03:15.825Z

This flaw makes curl overflow a heap based buffer in the SOCKS5 proxy handshake. When curl is asked to pass along the host name to the SOCKS5 proxy to allow that to resolve the address instead of it getting done by curl itself, the maximum length that host name can be is 255 bytes. If the host name is detected to be longer, curl switches to local name resolving and instead passes on the resolved address only. Due to this bug, the local variable that means "let the host resolve the name" could get the wrong value during a slow SOCKS5 handshake, and contrary to the intention, copy the too long host name to the target buffer instead of copying just the resolved address there. The target buffer being a heap based buffer, and the host name coming from the URL that curl has been told to operate with.

Published: 2023-10-18T03:52:00.816Z
Updated: 2026-07-14T12:03:14.064Z