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ALPINE-CVE-2023-38545

CriticalCVSS 9.8 / 10
Published Oct 18, 2023·Last modified Dec 3, 2025
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

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.

Risk Scores
Base Score
9.8

The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the confidentiality of the information. There is a high impact on the integrity of the data. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.

Threat Intelligence
9.0

Active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. Immediate patching or mitigation is required.

EPSS
78.48%

The exploit probability is very high. The vulnerability is very likely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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