Service interruption via unbounded decompression chain allocation
Published Feb 23, 2023 · Updated Mar 12, 2025
Resource exhaustion in curl 7.57.0 through 7.87.0 allows remote attackers to interrupt service via chained HTTP response encodings. Curl_build_unencoding_stack resets its depth counter for each encoding header, so separate headers can create an effectively unbounded decoder stack. A transfer must process Content-Encoding or Transfer-Encoding data; excessive decoder allocation consumes heap memory until an out-of-memory error interrupts the transfer or process.
Summary
What happened
Resource exhaustion in curl 7.57.0 through 7.87.0 allows remote attackers to interrupt service via chained HTTP response encodings. Curl_build_unencoding_stack resets its depth counter for each encoding header, so separate headers can create an effectively unbounded decoder stack. A transfer must process Content-Encoding or Transfer-Encoding data; excessive decoder allocation consumes heap memory until an out-of-memory error interrupts the transfer or process.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-23916
- Published
- Feb 23, 2023
- Updated
- Mar 12, 2025
- Vendor
- curl
- Product
- curl
- Classifications
- CWE-770, T1499
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Feb 23, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Mar 12, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
Compare your product and version with the public record. A matching version still requires validation against your environment.
Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=Fixed in 7.88.0
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
See the directory against your own environment.
Your stack
Check the software in your environment
Book a demo to see how Hinoki identifies affected software and validates exploitability in your environment.
Book a demo