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Debian LinuxOperating system · Debian

CVE-2023-42464

CRITICAL · 9.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2023-09-20
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 3.1.17 or later.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
A Type Confusion vulnerability was found in the Spotlight RPC functions in afpd in Netatalk 3.1.x before 3.1.17. When parsing Spotlight RPC packets, one encoded data structure is a key-value style dictionary where the keys are character strings, and the values can be any of the supported types in the underlying protocol. Due to a lack of type checking in callers of the dalloc_value_for_key() function, which returns the object associated with a key, a malicious actor may be able to fully control the value of the pointer and theoretically achieve Remote Code Execution on the host. This issue is similar to CVE-2023-34967.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-843

A resource is accessed as one type when it was actually allocated as another, so the code misreads memory layout — in interpreters and language runtimes this is frequently a direct path to code execution. It often arises from unchecked casts on attacker-influenced objects. The fix is strict type checks before casts and memory-safe access patterns.

General guidance for the type confusion class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Debian LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 10.0= 11.0
NetatalkApplication
Affected:>= 3.1, < 3.1.17

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

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

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 3.1.17 or later
Fixed in 3.1.17
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

Netatalk 3.1.17 or later

  1. 1. Identify the current Netatalk version installed: `dpkg -l | grep netatalk` or `apt list --installed | grep netatalk`
  2. 2. For Debian 10 (buster) and Debian 11 (bullseye), check if Debian has released a security update: `apt update` followed by `apt list -a netatalk`
  3. 3. If a fixed package is available in Debian security updates, install it: `apt install netatalk=<fixed version>` or `apt install netatalk/stable-security`
  4. 4. If no Debian package is available, consider building from source: Download Netatalk 3.1.17 or later from https://github.com/Netatalk/netatalk/releases
  5. 5. Before upgrading production systems, test in a staging environment to verify compatibility
  6. 6. After upgrade, restart the afpd service: `systemctl restart afpd` or `service afpd restart`
  7. 7. Verify the new version is running: `netatalk -V` or check the afpd process version
Caveat Review release notes for 3.1.17 for any configuration or feature changes; test Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) functionality after upgrade

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can perform the upgrade in your staging environment and verify nothing breaks — typical engagement from $2,300. Get the upgrade done

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2023-42464 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

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What belongs here
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  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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