cross-posted from: https://biglemmowski.win/post/224873
Posted on twitter by Curl author Daniel Stenberg - https://nitter.cz/bagder/status/1709103920914526525
We are cutting the release cycle short and will release curl 8.4.0 on October 11, including a fix for a severity HIGH CVE. Buckle up.
… But this time actually the worst security problem found in curl in a long time
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2023-38545
If they annoubce what is it, attackers could use the bug to exploit systems before people get chance to update.
Though I worry its possible to know what the bug is by reviewing changes in curl source code
The exploit is years old and has been unknown until recently, and they specifically didn't list which versions are affected to avoid making it easier to figure out through code changes.
So don't announce anything… keep it quiet until the fixes are ready.
Now potential hackers know there's a flaw there and will be looking for it, and they have clear space to do so before anyone can fix it.
From what I've heard, it's to give companies time to prep for downtime to patch. If they just released the fix now, companies would have to scramble to deal with unexpected downtime.
I believe package maintainers have also been given the fix early to prepare it for release. That means there's no waiting for Ubuntu or whoever to have the update available.