CVE Catalog

CVE-2023-28321

MediumCVSS 5.9
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

High risk
1.81%

78th percentile - higher than 78% of all known CVEs

Summary

An improper certificate validation vulnerability in curl < v8.1.0 exists in the way it matches wildcard patterns in the Subject Alternative Name of TLS server certificates. curl's private wildcard matching function incorrectly matches IDN hostnames, potentially accepting patterns that should mismatch.

Risk Assessment

Organizations using curl < 8.1.0 are at risk of accepting invalid TLS certificates, potentially facilitating man-in-the-middle attacks.

Recommendation

Update curl to version 8.1.0 or later. Consider using the TLS library's name matching instead of curl's built-in function.

Other vulnerabilities in curl

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

An improper certificate validation vulnerability exists in curl <v8.1.0 in the way it supports matching of wildcard patterns when listed as "Subject Alternative Name" in TLS server certificates. curl can be built to use its own name matching function for TLS rather than one provided by a TLS library. This private wildcard matching function would match IDN (International Domain Name) hosts incorrectly and could as a result accept patterns that otherwise should mismatch. IDN hostnames are converted to puny code before used for certificate checks. Puny coded names always start with `xn--` and should not be allowed to pattern match, but the wildcard check in curl could still check for `x*`, which would match even though the IDN name most likely contained nothing even resembling an `x`.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS