Curl Bug Hype Fizzles After Patching Reveal

Curl Bug Hype Fizzles After Patching Reveal

October 11, 2023 at 04:24PM

The cybersecurity community anxiously awaited the disclosure of two security flaws in the open source proxy resolution tool, Curl. However, after patches and bug details were unveiled, neither vulnerability lived up to the hype. The first flaw could allow data corruption or remote code execution, but it only affects a limited number of deployments. The second flaw is a low-severity cookie injection issue that impacts the libcurl library. Hyped up fixes can provide valuable information to threat actors and may lead to exploit attempts or the distribution of malicious software.

According to the meeting notes, there was anticipation within the cybersecurity community regarding the disclosure of two security flaws in curl, an open source proxy resolution tool. One of the vulnerabilities, tracked under CVE-2023-38545, is a heap-based buffer overflow flaw that could potentially lead to data corruption or remote code execution. It specifically affects the SOCKS5 proxy handoff and has been assigned a rating of “high” severity. However, this vulnerability is only considered high severity in limited circumstances. The second vulnerability, tracked under CVE-2023-38546, is a low-severity cookie injection flaw that impacts the libcurl library and not curl itself. It is believed to be more significant for security devices and appliances that use curl in their operations.

There was concern expressed about the hype surrounding the security fix before the technical details were released. This could have provided valuable information to threat actors, especially since RedHat updated its change log ahead of the official curl release, potentially exposing unpatched targets. It is important to be cautious of bogus “fixed” versions of software that may contain malware, as attackers might take advantage of the rush to patch vulnerable systems.

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