CURL-CVE-2009-2417

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    CURL-CVE-2009-2417

    Published: 12 Aug 2009Last Modified: 19 May 2026
    Aliases:

    Summary: embedded zero in cert name

    Details: SSL and TLS Server certificates contain one or more fields with server name or otherwise matching patterns. These strings are stored as content and length within the certificate, and thus there is no particular terminating character. curl's OpenSSL interfacing code did faulty assumptions about those names and patterns being null-terminated, allowing itself to be fooled in case a certificate would get a zero byte embedded into one of the name fields. To illustrate, a name that would show this vulnerability could look like: "example.com\0.haxx.se" This cert is thus made for "haxx.se" but curl would erroneously verify it with no complaints for "example.com". According to a recently published presentation, this kind of zero embedding has been proven to be possible with at least one CA.

    References:

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name:

    Purl:

    Affected ranges

    Type: SEMVER

    Events:

    Introduced- 7.4
    Fixed -7.19.6

    Affected versions

    7.19.5
    7.19.4
    7.19.3
    7.19.2
    7.19.1
    7.19.0

    Common Vulnerability Scoring System

    Attack Vector
    Network
    Adjacent
    Local
    Physical
    Privileges Required
    None
    Low
    High
    User Interaction
    None
    Required
    Scope
    Unchanged
    Changed
    Confidentiality
    None
    Low
    High
    Integrity
    None
    Low
    High
    Availability
    None
    Low
    High