Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling Affecting curl package, versions <7.87.0-2ubuntu1

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream curl package and not the curl package as distributed by Ubuntu. See How to fix? for Ubuntu:23.04 relevant fixed versions and status.

An allocation of resources without limits or throttling vulnerability exists in curl <v7.88.0 based on the "chained" HTTP compression algorithms, meaning that a server response can be compressed multiple times and potentially with differentalgorithms. The number of acceptable "links" in this "decompression chain" wascapped, but the cap was implemented on a per-header basis allowing a maliciousserver to insert a virtually unlimited number of compression steps simply byusing many headers. The use of such a decompression chain could result in a "malloc bomb", making curl end up spending enormous amounts of allocated heap memory, or trying to and returning out of memory errors.

• http://people.ubuntu.com/~ubuntu-security/cve/CVE-2023-23916
• https://hackerone.com/reports/1826048
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/02/msg00035.html
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/BQKE6TXYDHOTFHLTBZ5X73GTKI7II5KO/
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20230309-0006/
• https://www.debian.org/security/2023/dsa-5365
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202310-12
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/BQKE6TXYDHOTFHLTBZ5X73GTKI7II5KO/