CVE-2023-40589 FreeRDP Global-Buffer-Overflow in ncrush_decompress

What is CVE-2023-40589?

CVE-2023-40589 is a medium-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 31 Aug 2023. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

FreeRDP is a free implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), released under the Apache license. In affected versions there is a Global-Buffer-Overflow in the ncrush_decompress function. Feeding crafted input into this function can trigger the overflow which has only been shown to cause a crash. This issue has been addressed in versions 2.11.0 and 3.0.0-beta3. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this issue.

Weakness: CWE-120

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-40589?

It affects 3 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Fedoraproject Fedora, Freerdp Freerdp.

How do I fix CVE-2023-40589?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.

Is CVE-2023-40589 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-40589 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2023-40589, GHSA-gc34-mw6m-g42x, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-40589.