Alpine: multiple curl packages, libcurl: security update to 8.3.0-r1 (deprecated)

critical Tenable Cloud Security Plugin ID 401386

Description

There are packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities referenced in the following CVEs:

- This flaw makes curl overflow a heap based buffer in the SOCKS5 proxy handshake. When curl is asked to
pass along the host name to the SOCKS5 proxy to allow that to resolve the address instead of it getting
done by curl itself, the maximum length that host name can be is 255 bytes. If the host name is detected
to be longer, curl switches to local name resolving and instead passes on the resolved address only. Due
to this bug, the local variable that means "let the host resolve the name" could get the wrong value
during a slow SOCKS5 handshake, and contrary to the intention, copy the too long host name to the target
buffer instead of copying just the resolved address there. The target buffer being a heap based buffer,
and the host name coming from the URL that curl has been told to operate with. (CVE-2023-38545)

- 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.
(CVE-2023-38546)

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 401386

Version: Revision 1.44

Type: Local

Family: Alpine Linux Local Security Checks

Published: 10/11/2023

Updated: 11/7/2025

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: High

Score: 8.9

Percentile: 99.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 10

Temporal Score: 8.7

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2023-38545

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.8

Temporal Score: 9.4

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:H/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 10/11/2023

Vulnerability Publication Date: 10/11/2023

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2023-38545, CVE-2023-38546

Detections

Analytics