CVE-2026-80229: curl Use-After-Free — Exploit & Fix

Description

When performing transfers via libcurl’s multi interface, pooled TLS connections can outlive their originating easy handles. In OpenSSL 3 provider configurations, libcurl attaches an allocated library context to the easy handle's state and passes it to OpenSSL without acquiring an ownership reference; destroying the easy handle prematurely frees this context while the active connection retains a dangling pointer, leading to a heap-use-after-free upon subsequent I/O or post-handshake operations.

Is your site exposed to CVE-2026-80229?

Run a free security scan — no signup, results in seconds.

CVSS v3.1 Score

7.5

HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS — Exploit Prediction

0.0090

Probability of exploitation

0.58%

Percentile rank

EPSS estimates the probability that this vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. A higher score means more likely to be exploited.

Weakness Type (CWE)

CWE-416 Use After Free

Affected Products

Vendor	Product	Versions
haxx	curl	8.14.0 — 8.22.0

References

Advisories & Patches

https://curl.se/docs/CVE-2026-80229.html https://curl.se/docs/CVE-2026-80229.json

Exploits

https://hackerone.com/reports/3969255

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2026-80229? +

When performing transfers via libcurl’s multi interface, pooled TLS connections can outlive their originating easy handles. In OpenSSL 3 provider configurations, libcurl attaches an allocated library context to the easy handle's state and passes it to OpenSSL without acquiring an ownership reference; destroying the easy handle prematurely frees this context while the active connection retains a dangling pointer, leading to a heap-use-after-free upon subsequent I/O or post-handshake operations. It has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (HIGH).

How severe is CVE-2026-80229? +

CVE-2026-80229 has a CVSS v3.1 score of 7.5 out of 10, rated HIGH. This is a high-severity vulnerability that should be prioritized for patching. The EPSS score is 0.0090, placing it in the 1th percentile for exploitation probability.

What products are affected by CVE-2026-80229? +

CVE-2026-80229 affects products from haxx, specifically: curl. Check the affected products table above for specific version ranges.

How do I check if I'm vulnerable to CVE-2026-80229? +

You can use Secably's free Website Scanner to check your website for known vulnerabilities. For infrastructure scanning, use the Port Scanner to identify exposed services that may be affected. Check the vendor advisories linked above for specific patch and version information.

Related Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-55406

Buffa is a pure-Rust Protocol Buffers implementation with first-class protobuf editions support. Prior to 0.7.0, a soundness bug in the …

CVE-2026-6040

A heap use-after-free existed when importing the blank-width characters of an ODF number format. A position value read from the …

CVE-2025-24898

rust-openssl is a set of OpenSSL bindings for the Rust programming language. In affected versions `ssl::select_next_proto` can return a slice …

CVE-2025-31115

XZ Utils provide a general-purpose data-compression library plus command-line tools. In XZ Utils 5.3.3alpha to 5.8.0, the multithreaded .xz decoder …

CVE-2025-31498

c-ares is an asynchronous resolver library. From 1.32.3 through 1.34.4, there is a use-after-free in read_answers() when process_answer() may re-enqueue …

CVE-2025-4516

There is an issue in CPython when using `bytes.decode("unicode_escape", error="ignore|replace")`. If you are not using the "unicode_escape" encoding or an …

CVE-2026-80229