CURL-CVE-2023-38546

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    CURL-CVE-2023-38546

    Published: 11 Oct 2023Last Modified: 27 May 2026

    Summary: cookie injection with none file

    Details: This flaw allows an attacker to intentionally inject cookies 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 an 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 filename 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, when using the correct file format of course.

    References:

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name:

    Purl:

    Affected ranges

    Type: SEMVER

    Events:

    Introduced- 7.9.1
    Fixed -8.4.0

    Affected versions

    8.3.0

    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
    CURL-CVE-2023-38546 | CVE-DB