CVE-2026-5545
wrong reuse of HTTP Negotiate connection
Description
libcurl might in some circumstances reuse the wrong connection when asked to do an authenticated HTTP(S) request after a Negotiate-authenticated one, when both use the same host. libcurl features a pool of recent connections so that subsequent requests can reuse an existing connection to avoid overhead. When reusing a connection a range of criteria must be met. Due to a logical error in the code, a request that was issued by an application could wrongfully reuse an existing connection to the same server that was authenticated using different credentials. An application that first uses Negotiate authentication to a server with `user1:password1` and then does another operation to the same server asking for any authentication method but for `user2:password2` (while the previous connection is still alive) - the second request gets confused and wrongly reuses the same connection and sends the new request over that connection thinking it uses a mix of user1's and user2's credentials when it is in fact still using the connection authenticated for user1...
CVSS Vector Breakdown
AV:NAttack VectorAC:HAttack ComplexityPR:NPrivileges RequiredUI:NUser InteractionS:UScopeC:LConfidentialityI:HIntegrityA:NAvailabilityWeaknesses
Affected Products
Attack Graph
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Exploitability
MITRE ATT&CK
2 techniquesReferences
Timeline
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