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CVE-2023-38546

Exploitation: none

CVSS base score: not scored

Vendor: curl   Product: curl

Description

This flaw allows an attacker to insert cookies at will into a running program using libcurl, if the specific series of conditions are met. libcurl performs transfers. In its API, an application creates "easy handles" that are the individual handles for single transfers. libcurl provides a function call that duplicates en easy handle called [curl_easy_duphandle](https://curl.se/libcurl/c/curl_easy_duphandle.html). If a transfer has cookies enabled when the handle is duplicated, the cookie-enable state is also cloned - but without cloning the actual cookies. If the source handle did not read any cookies from a specific file on disk, the cloned version of the handle would instead store the file name as `none` (using the four ASCII letters, no quotes). Subsequent use of the cloned handle that does not explicitly set a source to load cookies from would then inadvertently load cookies from a file named `none` - if such a file exists and is readable in the current directory of the program using libcurl. And if using the correct file format of course.

Lifecycle Timeline

Each milestone comes from a different source, so gaps between them are gaps in what those sources publish, not evidence that nothing happened. EPSS history for this CVE holds 165 points from 2023-10-21, tracked daily from 2026-09-09; earlier points are weekly, which dates a spike to within a week. Peak probability 6.2% on 2026-06-20.

Published Applicability

Red Hat CSAF/VEX 11 affected · 510 fixed · 147 not affected
OSV.dev (incl. GHSA) 3 affected · 3 fixed · 0 not affected
CVE List v5 (CNA container) 1 affected · 0 fixed · 1 not affected
CVE List v5 (ADP/Vulnrichment) 4 affected · 0 fixed · 0 not affected

Check whether a specific version is affected →

What each source publishes about which product versions carry this vulnerability, kept as written rather than merged. Absence here means no source has published applicability data, not that nothing is affected.

Research & News Coverage

No mentions found in monitored research blogs or news feeds.

Detection & Exploitation

Exploit / Pen Test
none published
Network IDS/IPS
none published
Host / SIEM
none published

Coverage across public collections only: Nuclei and OpenVAS NVT (scan); Snort and Suricata ET Open (network); Sigma and YARA (host/SIEM); Metasploit, Exploit-DB and public GitHub repositories (exploit). Absence here means nothing public was found, not that detection is impossible.
GitHub PoC repositories are collected automatically by PoC-in-GitHub (CC0) and are not vetted: some are fakes and some are malware. Treat them as evidence that code was published, not as code to run.
OpenVAS coverage derives from the Greenbone Community Feed, made available under the Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0; its individual Vulnerability Tests are licensed GNU GPL v2.

Distribution Status

Debian · curl bookworm 7.88.1-10+deb12u4 trixie 8.3.0-3 forky 8.3.0-3 sid 8.3.0-3 scope: local

Where the distribution has shipped a fix, and in which version. Green means the release has resolved it, amber that it is still open. Data from the Debian Security Tracker, used under Debian's MIT / GPLv2+ terms. Debian is upstream of several other distributions, so a fix here often precedes theirs.

CISA Assessment (Vulnrichment / SSVC)

none
no
partial
—
—
2024-09-13

Listed By

SourceDateRecord
CISA Vulnrichment 2024-09-13 source record →

Referenced in Advisories

DateAdvisoryIssuer
2024-10-10 Update on SVR Cyber Operations and Vulnerability Exploitation NSA

Weaponization Timeline — Offensive & Testing Tools

No exploit-tool sightings recorded for this CVE.

Evidence tiers are explained on the About page — a merged Metasploit module is far stronger evidence than a distro package mention.

External References