When an OAuth2 bearer token is used for an HTTP(S) transfer, and that transfer
performs a redirect to a second URL, curl could leak that token to the second
hostname under some circumstances.
If the hostname that the first request is redirected to has information in the
used .netrc file, with either of the `machine` or `default` keywords, curl
would pass on the bearer token set for the first host also to the second one.
curl would wrongly reuse an existing HTTP proxy connection doing CONNECT to a
server, even if the new request uses different credentials for the HTTP proxy.
The proper behavior is to create or use a separate connection.
libcurl can in some circumstances reuse the wrong connection when asked to do
an Negotiate-authenticated HTTP or HTTPS request.
libcurl features a pool of recent connections so that subsequent requests can
reuse an existing connection to avoid overhead.
When reusing a connection a range of criterion must first be met. Due to a
logical error in the code, a request that was issued by an application could
wrongfully reuse an existing connection to the same server that was
authenticated using different credentials. One underlying reason being that
Negotiate sometimes authenticates *connections* and not *requests*, contrary
to how HTTP is designed to work.
An application that allows Negotiate authentication to a server (that responds
wanting Negotiate) with `user1:password1` and then does another operation to
the same server also using Negotiate but with `user2:password2` (while the
previous connection is still alive) - the second request wrongly reused the
same connection and since it then sees that the Negotiate negotiation is
already made, it just sends the request over that connection thinking it uses
the user2 credentials when it is in fact still using the connection
authenticated for user1...
The set of authentication methods to use is set with `CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH`.
Applications can disable libcurl's reuse of connections and thus mitigate this
problem, by using one of the following libcurl options to alter how
connections are or are not reused: `CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT`,
`CURLOPT_MAXCONNECTS` and `CURLMOPT_MAX_HOST_CONNECTIONS` (if using the
curl_multi API).
When doing SSH-based transfers using either SCP or SFTP, and setting the
known_hosts file, libcurl could still mistakenly accept connecting to hosts
*not present* in the specified file if they were added as recognized in the
libssh *global* known_hosts file.
When doing SSH-based transfers using either SCP or SFTP, and asked to do
public key authentication, curl would wrongly still ask and authenticate using
a locally running SSH agent.
When an OAuth2 bearer token is used for an HTTP(S) transfer, and that transfer
performs a cross-protocol redirect to a second URL that uses an IMAP, LDAP,
POP3 or SMTP scheme, curl might wrongly pass on the bearer token to the new
target host.
When doing multi-threaded LDAPS transfers (LDAP over TLS) with libcurl,
changing TLS options in one thread would inadvertently change them globally
and therefore possibly also affect other concurrently setup transfers.
Disabling certificate verification for a specific transfer could
unintentionally disable the feature for other threads as well.
curl's code for managing SSH connections when SFTP was done using the wolfSSH
powered backend was flawed and missed host verification mechanisms.
This prevents curl from detecting MITM attackers and more.
When libcurl is asked to perform automatic gzip decompression of
content-encoded HTTP responses with the `CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING` option,
**using zlib 1.2.0.3 or older**, an attacker-controlled integer overflow would
make libcurl perform a buffer overflow.
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.