Reference page — cumulative record through Monday, October 19, 2026 UTC. Reference pages update as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record.

CVE-2023-23916

CVE-2023-23916MEDIUM

n/a https://github.com/curl/curl — An allocation of resources without limits or throttling vulnerability exists in curl <v7.88.0 based on the "chained" HTTP compression alg…

  AV  AC  PR  UI  S  C  I  A   CVSS    EPSS   %ile   KEV
   N   L   N   R  U  N  N  H    6.5   .0174   77.4     —

AFFECTED
  Product                       Versions           Fixed
  https://github.com/curl/curl  Fixed in 7.88.0 –  —

TIMELINE
  Jan 19  Reserved by hackerone
  Feb 23  Published (CNA: hackerone)
  Oct 14  EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2023-23916 (https://github.com/curl/curl). Public exploit reference added.

CWE-770 · CNA: hackerone · CVSS v3.1 · 7 references · NVD status: Modified

Description

An allocation of resources without limits or throttling vulnerability exists in curl <v7.88.0 based on the "chained" HTTP compression algorithms, meaning that a server response can be compressed multiple times and potentially with differentalgorithms. The number of acceptable "links" in this "decompression chain" wascapped, but the cap was implemented on a per-header basis allowing a maliciousserver to insert a virtually unlimited number of compression steps simply byusing many headers. The use of such a decompression chain could result in a "malloc bomb", making curl end up spending enormous amounts of allocated heap memory, or trying to and returning out of memory errors.

Lifecycle

Complete event history — 3 events, chronological
Date	Event	Detail
January 19, 2023	Reserved	Reserved by hackerone
February 23, 2023	Published	Published (CNA: hackerone)
October 14, 2026	EXPLOIT PUBLISHED	EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2023-23916 (https://github.com/curl/curl). Public exploit reference added.

Affected

Affected products and packages — 1 row
Vendor	Product / Package	Ecosystem	Version introduced	Fixed
n/a	https://github.com/curl/curl	—	Fixed in 7.88.0	—

Weaknesses

CWE-770

References (7)

https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-398330.html
https://hackerone.com/reports/1826048 [Exploit, Issue Tracking]
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/02/msg00035.html [Mailing List, Third Party Advisory]
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/BQKE6TXYDHOTFHLTBZ5X73GTKI7II5KO/ [Mailing List, Third Party Advisory]
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202310-12 [Third Party Advisory]
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20230309-0006/ [Third Party Advisory]
https://www.debian.org/security/2023/dsa-5365 [Third Party Advisory]

Authoritative record: CVE-2023-23916 at cve.org

Weaknesses: CWE-770

About this page

This is a reference page, not a dated page of record. It assembles the complete lifecycle of CVE-2023-23916 from the CVE Program record, NVD enrichment, the CISA KEV catalog, EPSS, and OSV advisories. The box score's numbers (CVSS, EPSS, KEV status) are current as of Monday, October 19, 2026 UTC and are re-derived as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record. The authoritative source for this identifier is cve.org.