🛡️ CVE-2023-23916 on Debian — curl

⚪ Unknown ✅ No Known Exploit OSV
N/A
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

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.

Distribution advisory

This page covers CVE-2023-23916 as tracked by Debian, for the package curl. The fix is available in version 7.88.1-1; earlier versions remain affected.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs no privileges on the target. A user must be tricked into taking some action. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality none, integrity none, availability high.

Weakness class

DEBIAN-CVE-2023-23916 is classified as CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits. Resources are allocated on request with no cap, so a client can exhaust them.

Affected software

DEBIAN-CVE-2023-23916 is recorded against 1 package.

  • curl (fixed in 7.88.1-1)

Timeline and source

Published on 23 February 2023 and last revised on 7 August 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from OSV.

References

security-tracker.debian.org (Advisory)

CVE-2023-23916 on other distributions

Each distribution ships its own build and its own fixed version. Pick the one you run:

Details

Severity Unknown
CVSS Score N/A
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source OSV
Published 2023-02-23
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-08-07
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
curl — 7.88.1-1

Vulnerability Monitoring

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