CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2024-9681

Incorrect Comparison

Published: Nov 06, 2024 | Modified: Dec 13, 2024
CVSS 3.x
6.5
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
2.5 LOW
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
Ubuntu
LOW

When curl is asked to use HSTS, the expiry time for a subdomain might overwrite a parent domains 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 subdomains expiry timeout bleed over and get set for the parent domain example.com in curls 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 parents entry earlier, thus making curl inadvertently switch back to insecure HTTP earlier than otherwise intended.

Weakness

The product compares two entities in a security-relevant context, but the comparison is incorrect, which may lead to resultant weaknesses.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Curl Haxx 7.74.0 (including) 8.11.0 (excluding)
Curl Ubuntu jammy *
Curl Ubuntu noble *
Curl Ubuntu oracular *
Curl Ubuntu upstream *

Extended Description

This Pillar covers several possibilities:

References