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ALPINE-CVE-2024-9681

MediumCVSS 6.5 / 10
Published Nov 6, 2024·Last modified Dec 3, 2025
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

When curl is asked to use HSTS, the expiry time for a subdomain might overwrite a parent domain's cache entry, making it end sooner or later than otherwise intended.

This affects curl using applications that enable HSTS and use URLs with the insecure HTTP:// scheme and perform transfers with hosts like x.example.com as well as example.com where the first host is a subdomain of the second host.

(The HSTS cache either needs to have been populated manually or there needs to have been previous HTTPS accesses done as the cache needs to have entries for the domains involved to trigger this problem.)

When x.example.com responds with Strict-Transport-Security: headers, this bug can make the subdomain's expiry timeout bleed over and get set for the parent domain example.com in curl's HSTS cache.

The result of a triggered bug is that HTTP accesses to example.com get converted to HTTPS for a different period of time than what was asked for by the origin server. If example.com for example stops supporting HTTPS at its expiry time, curl might then fail to access http://example.com until the (wrongly set) timeout expires. This bug can also expire the parent's entry earlier, thus making curl inadvertently switch back to insecure HTTP earlier than otherwise intended.

Risk Scores
Base Score
6.5

The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is difficult for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability and may require special conditions. 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 integrity of the data. There is a low impact on the availability of the system.

Threat Intelligence
6.0

Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.

EPSS
2.03%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely 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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