ALPINE-CVE-2023-23916
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.
Risk Scores
Affected Products
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| Alpine:v3.18 | curl | 7.27.0-r0, 7.87.0-r3, 7.87.0-r2 |
| Alpine:v3.21 | curl | 7.64.1-r1, 0, 7.19.2-r0 |
| Alpine:v3.19 | curl | 7.62.0-r0, 7.29.0-r0, 7.30.0-r0 |
| Alpine:v3.23 | curl | 7.50.3-r1, 0, 7.19.2-r0 |
| Alpine:v3.15 | curl | 7.50.2-r0, 7.80.0-r4, 7.80.0-r3 |
| Alpine:v3.16 | curl | 7.19.6-r0, 7.19.7-r0, 7.19.7-r1 |
| Alpine:v3.14 | curl | 7.20.1-r1, 7.19.2-r0, 7.19.2-r1 |
| Alpine:v3.20 | curl | 7.33.0-r0, 7.87.0-r3, 7.87.0-r2 |
| Alpine:v3.17 | curl | 7.28.1-r0, 7.19.2-r1, 7.19.4-r0 |
| Alpine:v3.22 | curl | 0, 7.27.0-r0, 7.87.0-r3 |
Timeline
- Feb 23, 2023 CVE Published
- Dec 3, 2025 CVE Updated
- Apr 30, 2026 Distribution Patch