🛡️ CVE-2023-38039 on Debian — curl

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

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.

Distribution advisory

This page covers CVE-2023-38039 as tracked by Debian, for the package curl. The fix is available in version 8.3.0-1; 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. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality none, integrity none, availability high.

Weakness class

DEBIAN-CVE-2023-38039 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-2023-38039 is recorded against 1 package.

  • curl (fixed in 8.3.0-1)

Timeline and source

Published on 15 September 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-2023-38039 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:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source OSV
Published 2023-09-15
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-08-07
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
curl — 8.3.0-1

Site Security Check

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DEBIAN-CVE-2023-38039 is rated CVSS 7.5 High. BotEraser scans your installation against known CVE records and tells you whether this vulnerability applies to the versions you actually run.

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