cURL: Certificate validation error — GLSA 200909-20

An error in the X.509 certificate handling of cURL might enable remote attackers to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks.

Affected packages

Background

cURL is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax, supporting numerous protocols.

Description

Scott Cantor reported that cURL does not properly handle fields in X.509 certificates that contain an ASCII NUL (\0) character. Specifically, the processing of such fields is stopped at the first occurence of a NUL character. This type of vulnerability was recently discovered by Dan Kaminsky and Moxie Marlinspike.

Impact

A remote attacker might employ a specially crafted X.509 certificate (that for instance contains a NUL character in the Common Name field) to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-misc/curl-7.19.6"

References

• CVE-2009-2417

Release date
September 25, 2009

Latest revision
September 25, 2009: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
remote

Bugzilla entries

• 281515