Vulnerability

CVE-2016-8616

Medium· 3.7CVSS3.7EPSS5%

.rules3/5

curl/libcurl: case insensitive password comparison

When reusing a connection, curl was doing case insensitive comparisons of username and password with the existing connections. This means that if an unused connection with proper credentials exists for a protocol that has connection-scoped credentials, an attacker can cause that connection to be reused if s/he knows the case-insensitive version of the correct password.

Threat signal

51/100

Elevated

Severity

medium

CVSS

3.7

EPSS

Active

CVSS

v3.0via NVDOpen in FIRST calculator →

3.7/ 10LOWCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Attack VectorNetworkExploitable remotely over the internet — no local access needed.
Attack ComplexityHighRequires conditions outside attacker's control (race, brute-force, configuration
Privileges RequiredNoneUnauthenticated — no credentials needed.
User InteractionNoneFully automated — no victim action needed.
ScopeUnchangedImpact contained to the vulnerable component.
Confidentiality ImpactNoneNo confidentiality impact.
Integrity ImpactLowSome data modification; attacker doesn't fully control extent.
Availability ImpactNoneNo availability impact.

EPSS

Exploit prediction · 30-day horizonFIRST.org →

4.51%

probability of exploitation in next 30 days

p89

higher than 89% of all CVEs

3-day trend↑ 0pp

Mid-pack — moderate exploitation likelihood.

Vendor VEX

No VEX statements published for CVE-2016-8616. Vendors publish VEX (Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange) to assert per-product whether a CVE is actually exploitable in their distribution.

SSVCDefer

No exploitation, limited impact or prevalence

exploitation: none
automatable: no
impact: partial
mission: support

Lifecycle

2016-11-02Published
2026-04-25Last modified2 sources

References

https://curl.se/docs/CVE-2016-8616.html

No source-event history recorded yet. New revisions will appear here as ingestors re-fetch this CVE.