CVE-2026-1965 | bad reuse of HTTP Negotiate connection

libcurl can in some circumstances reuse the wrong connection when asked to do an Negotiate-authenticated HTTP or HTTPS request. 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 criterion must first 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. One underlying reason being that Negotiate sometimes authenticates *connections* and not *requests*, contrary to how HTTP is designed to work. An application that allows Negotiate authentication to a server (that responds wanting Negotiate) with `user1:password1` and then does another operation to the same server also using Negotiate but with `user2:password2` (while the previous connection is still alive) - the second request wrongly reused the same connection and since it then sees that the Negotiate negotiation is already made, it just sends the request over that connection thinking it uses the user2 credentials when it is in fact still using the connection authenticated for user1... The set of authentication methods to use is set with `CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH`. Applications can disable libcurl's reuse of connections and thus mitigate this problem, by using one of the following libcurl options to alter how connections are or are not reused: `CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT`, `CURLOPT_MAXCONNECTS` and `CURLMOPT_MAX_HOST_CONNECTIONS` (if using the curl_multi API).

Published: 2026-03-11 Last update: 2026-03-12 Assigner: 2499f714-1537-4658-8207-48ae4bb9eae9 Source: 2499f714-1537-4658-8207-48ae4bb9eae9

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2026-1965 is rated Low Risk (32.2/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.26%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2026-1965

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 0.06% 0.26% +0.20%
2 2026-03-12 0.04% 0.06% +0.02%
3 2026-03-11 0.04%

Full EPSS history (3 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2026-1965

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
2.8 3.6 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2026-1965

OS Trackers for CVE-2026-1965

vendor priority summary link
alpine CVE-2026-1965: 1 source package rows (curl); 281 state rows across 6 repos (3.19-main, 3.20-main, 3.21-main, 3.22-main, 3.23-main, edge-main); fixed 1, open 280. https://security.alpinelinux.org/vuln/CVE-2026-1965
debian not yet assigned CVE-2026-1965 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (curl), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): open 3, resolved 2. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-1965
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-1965
suse high CVE-2026-1965 severity important: SUSE including 304 source package names (1.1.1-1.44:libcurl4-8.14.1-150700.7.14.1, 13.2-9.77:curl-8.14.1-slfo.1.1_6.1, …), 493 product×package rows across 98 product lines (Container private-registry/harbor-trivy-adapter, Container suse/ltss/sle12.5/sles12sp5, … (98 product lines)): Fixed 254, Known Affected 231, First Fixed 8. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-1965/
ubuntu medium CVE-2026-1965 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (curl), 8 status rows across 8 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): released 5, not-affected 3. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-1965

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2026-1965

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
haxx curl >= 7.10.6, < 8.19.0 cpe:2.3:a:haxx:curl:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2026-1965

cvelogic Threat Intelligence