Docs Overview
Project
Bug Bounty Bug Report Code of conduct Dependencies Donate FAQ Features Governance History Install Known Bugs Logo TODO website Info
Protocols
CA Extract HTTP cookies HTTP/3 MQTT SSL certs SSL libs compared URL syntax WebSocket
Releases
Changelog curl CVEs Release Table Version Numbering Vulnerabilities
Tool
Comparison Table curl man page HTTP Scripting mk-ca-bundle Tutorial When options were added
Who and Why
Companies Copyright Sponsors Thanks The name
curl / Docs / curl CVEs / not verifying certs for TLS to IP address / Schannel
Related:
Audits
Bug Bounty
Changelog
curl CVEs
JSON metadata
Vulnerability Disclosure
Vulnerabilities Table

CVE-2014-2522

not verifying certs for TLS to IP address / Schannel

Project curl Security Advisory, March 26th 2014 Permalink

VULNERABILITY

When asked to do a TLS connection (HTTPS, FTPS, IMAPS, etc) to a URL specified with an IP address instead of a name, libcurl would wrongly not verify the server's name in the certificate. The signature (whether it was signed by a trusted CA) and validity (whether the date was within the certificate's lifetime and it was not revoked) verification was still performed.

This is a problem in libcurl built to use the Schannel TLS backend. Schannel is the native library provided by Microsoft Windows.

Only users on Windows can be affected by this, and only if libcurl was built to use the native TLS backend library.

INFO

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the name CVE-2014-2522 to this issue.

CWE-297: Improper Validation of Certificate with Host Mismatch

Severity: Medium

AFFECTED VERSIONS

This flaw has existed ever since libcurl started to support the Schannel backend.

libcurl is used by many applications, but not always advertised as such!

SOLUTION

libcurl 7.36.0 makes sure that all TLS using requests verify the hostname even if specified as an IP address in the URL.

The fix was committed to the public source code repository because the full security impact was not properly realized until after the fact.

RECOMMENDATIONS

We suggest you take one of the following actions immediately, in order of preference:

A - Upgrade to curl and libcurl 7.36.0

B - Apply the patch and rebuild libcurl

C - Rebuild libcurl to use another TLS backend

TIMELINE

It was discovered by the curl project during late February 2014.

libcurl 7.36.0 was released on March 26th 2014, coordinated with the publication of this advisory.

CREDITS

Marc Hoersken helped coordinate the bug fix.

Thanks a lot!