🛡️ CVE-2023-36811 on Debian — borgbackup

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

Description

borgbackup is an opensource, deduplicating archiver with compression and authenticated encryption. A flaw in the cryptographic authentication scheme in borgbackup allowed an attacker to fake archives and potentially indirectly cause backup data loss in the repository. The attack requires an attacker to be able to: 1. insert files (with no additional headers) into backups and 2. gain write access to the repository. This vulnerability does not disclose plaintext to the attacker, nor does it affect the authenticity of existing archives. Creating plausible fake archives may be feasible for empty or small archives, but is unlikely for large archives. The issue has been fixed in borgbackup 1.2.5. Users are advised to upgrade. Additionally to installing the fixed code, users must follow the upgrade procedure as documented in the change log. Data loss after being attacked can be avoided by reviewing the archives (timestamp and contents valid and as expected) after any "borg check --repair" and before "borg prune". There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Distribution advisory

This page covers CVE-2023-36811 as tracked by Debian, for the package borgbackup. The fix is available in version 1.2.5-1; earlier versions remain affected.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached with local access to the system, attack complexity is high, an attacker needs low-level privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality none, integrity high, availability none.

Weakness class

DEBIAN-CVE-2023-36811 is classified as CWE-347: Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature. A signature is not checked correctly, so forged or modified content is accepted as genuine.

Affected software

DEBIAN-CVE-2023-36811 is recorded against 1 package.

  • borgbackup (fixed in 1.2.5-1)

Timeline and source

Published on 30 August 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-2023-36811 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:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source OSV
Published 2023-08-30
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-08-07
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
borgbackup — 1.2.5-1

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