CVE-2026-87082
Medium
Elevated severity or exploit probability.
Description
Net::IDN::Punycode versions before 2.590 for Perl hang, crash or return a wrong label via unvalidated malformed UTF-8 in encode_punycode. Neither backend checks that its input is well-formed UTF-8, so a string with the UTF-8 flag set over malformed bytes, as the :utf8 PerlIO layer produces from any malformed input, reaches the encoder unchecked. On perl 5.32 and later the XS backend reports a malformed sequence with a length of `(STRLEN)-1`, so the scan steps back one byte instead of forward and never ends. On earlier perls the XS returns a valid label for a different name. The pure-Perl backend runs a regex over the flagged string. Depending on the bytes, it aborts with SIGBUS on perl 5.28 and later, dies with a panic, or returns a wrong label. The documented conversion functions match the label against Unicode properties first and that match dies on such a string, so only a direct call to encode_punycode reaches the defect. The decoder is not affected. A direct caller encoding attacker-supplied bytes hangs, crashes or gets a label for a name the input never held.
References
- https://github.com/robrwo/Net-IDN-Encode/commit/0918fb4a951ed5f4494c4cf202419c2842507ea4.patch
- https://github.com/robrwo/Net-IDN-Encode/commit/572af0183b3a6294e22c6b509268da09697cf77d.patch
- https://github.com/robrwo/Net-IDN-Encode/commit/59dc7f2c605a897bcbfe0ac5eb2b8dbe6792348d.patch
- https://github.com/robrwo/Net-IDN-Encode/commit/accb6df57ad107ec0c4bfb27b21551eed97c700e.patch
- https://metacpan.org/release/PJCJ/Net-IDN-Encode-2.590-TRIAL/changes
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/09/22/17