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CVE-2021-22947 Moderate

STARTTLS protocol injection via MITM

When curl connects to an IMAP, POP3, SMTP or FTP server to exchange data securely using STARTTLS to upgrade the connection to TLS level, the server can still respond and send back multiple responses before the TLS upgrade. Such multiple *pipelined* responses are cached by curl. curl would then upgrade to TLS but not flush the in-queue of cached responses and instead use and trust the responses it got *before* the TLS handshake as if they were authenticated. Using this flaw, it allows a Man-In-The-Middle attacker to first inject the fake responses, then pass-through the TLS traffic from the legitimate server and trick curl into sending data back to the user thinking the attacker's injected data comes from the TLS-protected server. Over POP3 and IMAP an attacker can inject fake response data.

Exploit probability 3.0%
Published September 15, 2021
Required by Not available
Last source change May 27, 2026

02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE

Affected packages

Unknown Unknown

102 explicit affected versions

Unknown Unknown

179 explicit affected versions

03 / CONNECTIONS

Connected vulnerabilities

04 / EVIDENCE

Source records

Open Source Vulnerabilities CVE-2021-22947

When curl >= 7.20.0 and <= 7.78.0 connects to an IMAP or POP3 server to retrieve data using STARTTLS to upgrade to TLS security, the server can respond and send back multiple responses at once that curl caches. curl would then upgrade to TLS but not flush the in-queue of cached responses but instead continue using and trustingthe responses it got *before* the TLS handshake as if they were authenticated.Using this flaw, it allows a Man-In-The-Middle attacker to first inject the fake responses, then pass-through the TLS traffic from the legitimate server and trick curl into sending data back to the user thinking the attacker's injected data comes from the TLS-protected server.

View original source
Open Source Vulnerabilities CURL-CVE-2021-22947

When curl connects to an IMAP, POP3, SMTP or FTP server to exchange data securely using STARTTLS to upgrade the connection to TLS level, the server can still respond and send back multiple responses before the TLS upgrade. Such multiple *pipelined* responses are cached by curl. curl would then upgrade to TLS but not flush the in-queue of cached responses and instead use and trust the responses it got *before* the TLS handshake as if they were authenticated. Using this flaw, it allows a Man-In-The-Middle attacker to first inject the fake responses, then pass-through the TLS traffic from the legitimate server and trick curl into sending data back to the user thinking the attacker's injected data comes from the TLS-protected server. Over POP3 and IMAP an attacker can inject fake response data.

View original source

05 / REFERENCES

Further evidence