CVE-2023-28321
IDN wildcard match
Project curl Security Advisory, May 17th 2023 - Permalink
VULNERABILITY
curl supports matching of wildcard patterns when listed as "Subject Alternative Name" in TLS server certificates. curl can be built to use its own name matching function for TLS rather than one provided by a TLS library. This private wildcard matching function would match IDN (International Domain Name) hosts incorrectly and could as a result accept patterns that otherwise should mismatch.
IDN hostnames are converted to puny code before used for certificate checks. Puny coded names always start with xn-- and should not be allowed to pattern match, but the wildcard check in curl could still check for x*, which would match even though the IDN name most likely contained nothing even resembling an x.
INFO
curl's wildcard matching function is used only when curl was built to use OpenSSL, Schannel or Gskit. All other backends use the matching functions of the corresponding TLS library and are thus not vulnerable to this flaw.
This flaw is lessened somewhat by two factors:
Certificates issued by Certificate Authorities for the public Internet are not allowed to use "partial" wildcards, thus completely avoiding this issue.
In many circumstances, the control of host names used and the wildcards used in issued certificates are controlled by the same entity, making this unlikely to actually become a problem.
curl does not need to be built with IDN support to be vulnerable, as a user can pass in a puny coded version of the host name directly in the URL and can then trigger this flaw.
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the name CVE-2023-28321 to this issue.
CWE-295: Improper Certificate Validation
Severity: Low
AFFECTED VERSIONS
This bug was introduced in curl when IDN support was first introduced, in curl 7.12.0 - June 2004. The wildcard function was subsequently updated for this case in 2012 (the IDN problem is mentioned in RFC 6125 in a far from obvious way) but was done wrongly, so the flaw remained.
- Affected versions: curl 7.12.0 to and including 8.0.1
- Not affected versions: curl < 7.12.0 and curl >= 8.1.0
- Introduced-in: https://github.com/curl/curl/commit/9631fa740708b1890197fad
libcurl is used by many applications, but not always advertised as such!
SOLUTION
curl 8.1.0 completely removes the support for "partial" matches and now only supports *.. No a*, a*b or *b matches. For all host names, IDN or not.
RECOMMENDATIONS
A - Upgrade curl to version 8.1.0
B - Apply the patch to your local version
TIMELINE
This issue was reported to the curl project on April 17 2023. We contacted distros@openwall on May 9, 2023.
curl 8.1.0 was released on May 17 2023, coordinated with the publication of this advisory.
CREDITS
- Reported-by: Hiroki Kurosawa
- Patched-by: Daniel Stenberg
Thanks a lot!