CVE-2024-9681
Published:November 06, 2024
Updated:May 17, 2026
When curl is asked to use HSTS, the expiry time for a subdomain might
overwrite a parent domain's cache entry, making it end sooner or later than
otherwise intended.
This affects curl using applications that enable HSTS and use URLs with the
insecure "HTTP://" scheme and perform transfers with hosts like
"x.example.com" as well as "example.com" where the first host is a subdomain
of the second host.
(The HSTS cache either needs to have been populated manually or there needs to
have been previous HTTPS accesses done as the cache needs to have entries for
the domains involved to trigger this problem.)
When "x.example.com" responds with "Strict-Transport-Security:" headers, this
bug can make the subdomain's expiry timeout bleed over and get set for the
parent domain "example.com" in curl's HSTS cache.
The result of a triggered bug is that HTTP accesses to "example.com" get
converted to HTTPS for a different period of time than what was asked for by
the origin server. If "example.com" for example stops supporting HTTPS at its
expiry time, curl might then fail to access "http://example.com" until the
(wrongly set) timeout expires. This bug can also expire the parent's entry
earlier, thus making curl inadvertently switch back to insecure HTTP earlier
than otherwise intended.
Affected Packages
https://github.com/curl/curl.git (GITHUB):
Affected version(s) >=curl-7_74_0 <curl-8_11_0Fix Suggestion:
Update to version curl-8_11_0Additional Notes
The description of this vulnerability differs from MITRE.
Related Resources (15)
Do you need more information?
Contact UsCVSS v4
Base Score:
8.3
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
HIGH
Attack Requirements
NONE
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Vulnerable System Confidentiality
NONE
Vulnerable System Integrity
HIGH
Vulnerable System Availability
LOW
Subsequent System Confidentiality
NONE
Subsequent System Integrity
NONE
Subsequent System Availability
NONE
CVSS v3
Base Score:
6.5
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
HIGH
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
HIGH
Availability
LOW
Weakness Type (CWE)
Incorrect Comparison
EPSS
Base Score:
0.73