Security Advisories (27)
CVE-2023-47039 (2023-10-30)

Perl for Windows relies on the system path environment variable to find the shell (cmd.exe). When running an executable which uses Windows Perl interpreter, Perl attempts to find and execute cmd.exe within the operating system. However, due to path search order issues, Perl initially looks for cmd.exe in the current working directory. An attacker with limited privileges can exploit this behavior by placing cmd.exe in locations with weak permissions, such as C:\ProgramData. By doing so, when an administrator attempts to use this executable from these compromised locations, arbitrary code can be executed.

CVE-2023-47100

In Perl before 5.38.2, S_parse_uniprop_string in regcomp.c can write to unallocated space because a property name associated with a \p{...} regular expression construct is mishandled. The earliest affected version is 5.30.0.

CVE-2012-5195 (2012-12-18)

Heap-based buffer overflow in the Perl_repeatcpy function in util.c in Perl 5.12.x before 5.12.5, 5.14.x before 5.14.3, and 5.15.x before 15.15.5 allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption and crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via the 'x' string repeat operator.

CVE-2018-18311 (2018-12-07)

Perl before 5.26.3 and 5.28.x before 5.28.1 has a buffer overflow via a crafted regular expression that triggers invalid write operations.

CVE-2020-12723 (2020-06-05)

regcomp.c in Perl before 5.30.3 allows a buffer overflow via a crafted regular expression because of recursive S_study_chunk calls.

CVE-2011-0761 (2011-05-13)

Perl 5.10.x allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and application crash) by leveraging an ability to inject arguments into a (1) getpeername, (2) readdir, (3) closedir, (4) getsockname, (5) rewinddir, (6) tell, or (7) telldir function call.

CVE-2010-4777 (2014-02-10)

The Perl_reg_numbered_buff_fetch function in Perl 5.10.0, 5.12.0, 5.14.0, and other versions, when running with debugging enabled, allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (assertion failure and application exit) via crafted input that is not properly handled when using certain regular expressions, as demonstrated by causing SpamAssassin and OCSInventory to crash.

CVE-2009-3626 (2009-10-29)

Perl 5.10.1 allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) via a UTF-8 character with a large, invalid codepoint, which is not properly handled during a regular-expression match.

CVE-2011-1487 (2011-04-11)

The (1) lc, (2) lcfirst, (3) uc, and (4) ucfirst functions in Perl 5.10.x, 5.11.x, and 5.12.x through 5.12.3, and 5.13.x through 5.13.11, do not apply the taint attribute to the return value upon processing tainted input, which might allow context-dependent attackers to bypass the taint protection mechanism via a crafted string.

CVE-2020-10878 (2020-06-05)

Perl before 5.30.3 has an integer overflow related to mishandling of a "PL_regkind[OP(n)] == NOTHING" situation. A crafted regular expression could lead to malformed bytecode with a possibility of instruction injection.

CVE-2018-18314 (2018-12-07)

Perl before 5.26.3 has a buffer overflow via a crafted regular expression that triggers invalid write operations.

CVE-2018-18312 (2018-12-05)

Perl before 5.26.3 and 5.28.0 before 5.28.1 has a buffer overflow via a crafted regular expression that triggers invalid write operations.

CVE-2013-7422 (2015-08-16)

Integer underflow in regcomp.c in Perl before 5.20, as used in Apple OS X before 10.10.5 and other products, allows context-dependent attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (application crash) via a long digit string associated with an invalid backreference within a regular expression.

CVE-2011-2728 (2012-12-21)

The bsd_glob function in the File::Glob module for Perl before 5.14.2 allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a glob expression with the GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC flag, which triggers an uninitialized pointer dereference.

CVE-2026-13221 (2026-07-13)

Perl versions through 5.43.9 produce silently incorrect regular expression matches when an alternation of more than 65535 fixed string branches is compiled into a trie in Perl_study_chunk. When such branches are combined into a trie, the delta between the first branch and the shared tail is stored in a 16-bit field. A branch count above 65535 overflows the field, and the trie's match decision table is truncated with no warning or error. A pattern of this shape produces false positive matches (matching strings it should not) and false negative matches (failing to match strings it should). When such a pattern gates an access or filtering decision, the result is wrong.

CVE-2026-15534 (2026-08-09)

Perl versions through 5.45.1 have out-of-bounds heap reads and writes during regular expression matching via an undersized superlinear cache in S_regmatch. The regex engine's superlinear cache holds one bit per subject position for each participating WHILEM node, so the bit count is the subject length plus one times the number of nodes. Nothing checks that product for positive overflow of the signed 32-bit count: a 286331153 byte subject matched against a pattern with 15 participating nodes stores the count as 14, leaving a two byte cache. The cache is then indexed from the real match position and node number, so reads go past the end of the allocation, and on failure CACHEsayNO sets a bit past it. A caller that matches an attacker controlled subject of this size against a pattern of this shape can crash the process or corrupt heap memory.

CVE-2026-4176 (2026-03-29)

Perl versions from 5.9.4 before 5.40.4-RC1, from 5.41.0 before 5.42.2-RC1, from 5.43.0 before 5.43.9 contain a vulnerable version of Compress::Raw::Zlib. Compress::Raw::Zlib is included in the Perl package as a dual-life core module, and is vulnerable to CVE-2026-3381 due to a vendored version of zlib which has several vulnerabilities, including CVE-2026-27171. The bundled Compress::Raw::Zlib was updated to version 2.221 in Perl blead commit c75ae9cc164205e1b6d6dbd57bd2c65c8593fe94.

CVE-2026-57432 (2026-07-13)

Perl versions through 5.43.10 have an integer overflow in S_measure_struct leading to an out-of-bounds heap read in pack and unpack. S_measure_struct adds each item's size times its repeat count to a running total with no overflow check, so a large repeat count in a pack or unpack template wraps the signed SSize_t total negative. The @, X, and x position codes then guard their moves with a signed length comparison that passes when the length is negative, advancing the buffer pointer out of bounds. A template derived from untrusted input can read heap memory past the buffer and return it to the caller.

CVE-2026-8376 (2026-05-25)

Perl versions through 5.43.10 have a heap buffer overflow when compiling regular expressions with a repeated fixed string on 32-bit builds. Perl_study_chunk in regcomp_study.c checked the size of the joined substring buffer in characters rather than bytes. For a quantified fixed substring with a large minimum count, the byte length mincount * l could overflow SSize_t, producing an undersized SvGROW allocation; the subsequent copy writes past the end of the buffer. A caller that compiles an attacker-controlled regular expression on a 32-bit perl build triggers a heap buffer overflow at compile time.

CVE-2016-1238 (2016-08-02)

(1) cpan/Archive-Tar/bin/ptar, (2) cpan/Archive-Tar/bin/ptardiff, (3) cpan/Archive-Tar/bin/ptargrep, (4) cpan/CPAN/scripts/cpan, (5) cpan/Digest-SHA/shasum, (6) cpan/Encode/bin/enc2xs, (7) cpan/Encode/bin/encguess, (8) cpan/Encode/bin/piconv, (9) cpan/Encode/bin/ucmlint, (10) cpan/Encode/bin/unidump, (11) cpan/ExtUtils-MakeMaker/bin/instmodsh, (12) cpan/IO-Compress/bin/zipdetails, (13) cpan/JSON-PP/bin/json_pp, (14) cpan/Test-Harness/bin/prove, (15) dist/ExtUtils-ParseXS/lib/ExtUtils/xsubpp, (16) dist/Module-CoreList/corelist, (17) ext/Pod-Html/bin/pod2html, (18) utils/c2ph.PL, (19) utils/h2ph.PL, (20) utils/h2xs.PL, (21) utils/libnetcfg.PL, (22) utils/perlbug.PL, (23) utils/perldoc.PL, (24) utils/perlivp.PL, and (25) utils/splain.PL in Perl 5.x before 5.22.3-RC2 and 5.24 before 5.24.1-RC2 do not properly remove . (period) characters from the end of the includes directory array, which might allow local users to gain privileges via a Trojan horse module under the current working directory.

CVE-2015-8608 (2017-02-07)

The VDir::MapPathA and VDir::MapPathW functions in Perl 5.22 allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (out-of-bounds read) and possibly execute arbitrary code via a crafted (1) drive letter or (2) pInName argument.

CVE-2020-10543 (2020-06-05)

Perl before 5.30.3 on 32-bit platforms allows a heap-based buffer overflow because nested regular expression quantifiers have an integer overflow.

CVE-2018-6913 (2018-04-17)

Heap-based buffer overflow in the pack function in Perl before 5.26.2 allows context-dependent attackers to execute arbitrary code via a large item count.

CVE-2018-18313 (2018-12-07)

Perl before 5.26.3 has a buffer over-read via a crafted regular expression that triggers disclosure of sensitive information from process memory.

CVE-2015-8853 (2016-05-25)

The (1) S_reghop3, (2) S_reghop4, and (3) S_reghopmaybe3 functions in regexec.c in Perl before 5.24.0 allow context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) via crafted utf-8 data, as demonstrated by "a\x80."

CVE-2013-1667 (2013-03-14)

The rehash mechanism in Perl 5.8.2 through 5.16.x allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption and crash) via a crafted hash key.

CVE-2016-2381 (2016-04-08)

Perl might allow context-dependent attackers to bypass the taint protection mechanism in a child process via duplicate environment variables in envp.

NAME

autodie::exception - Exceptions from autodying functions.

SYNOPSIS

eval {
    use autodie;

    open(my $fh, '<', 'some_file.txt');

    ...
};

if (my $E = $@) {
    say "Ooops!  ",$E->caller," had problems: $@";
}

DESCRIPTION

When an autodie enabled function fails, it generates an autodie::exception object. This can be interrogated to determine further information about the error that occurred.

This document is broken into two sections; those methods that are most useful to the end-developer, and those methods for anyone wishing to subclass or get very familiar with autodie::exception.

Common Methods

These methods are intended to be used in the everyday dealing of exceptions.

The following assume that the error has been copied into a separate scalar:

if ($E = $@) {
    ...
}

This is not required, but is recommended in case any code is called which may reset or alter $@.

args

my $array_ref = $E->args;

Provides a reference to the arguments passed to the subroutine that died.

function

my $sub = $E->function;

The subroutine (including package) that threw the exception.

file

my $file = $E->file;

The file in which the error occurred (eg, myscript.pl or MyTest.pm).

package

my $package = $E->package;

The package from which the exceptional subroutine was called.

caller

my $caller = $E->caller;

The subroutine that called the exceptional code.

line

my $line = $E->line;

The line in $E->file where the exceptional code was called.

context

my $context = $E->context;

The context in which the subroutine was called. This can be 'list', 'scalar', or undefined (unknown). It will never be 'void', as autodie always captures the return value in one way or another.

return

my $return_value = $E->return;

The value(s) returned by the failed subroutine. When the subroutine was called in a list context, this will always be a reference to an array containing the results. When the subroutine was called in a scalar context, this will be the actual scalar returned.

errno

my $errno = $E->errno;

The value of $! at the time when the exception occurred.

NOTE: This method will leave the main autodie::exception class and become part of a role in the future. You should only call errno for exceptions where $! would reasonably have been set on failure.

eval_error

my $old_eval_error = $E->eval_error;

The contents of $@ immediately after autodie triggered an exception. This may be useful when dealing with modules such as Text::Balanced that set (but do not throw) $@ on error.

matches

if ( $e->matches('open') ) { ... }

if ( $e ~~ 'open' ) { ... }

matches is used to determine whether a given exception matches a particular role. On Perl 5.10, using smart-match (~~) with an autodie::exception object will use matches underneath.

An exception is considered to match a string if:

  • For a string not starting with a colon, the string exactly matches the package and subroutine that threw the exception. For example, MyModule::log. If the string does not contain a package name, CORE:: is assumed.

  • For a string that does start with a colon, if the subroutine throwing the exception does that behaviour. For example, the CORE::open subroutine does :file, :io and :all.

    See "CATEGORIES" in autodie for futher information.

Advanced methods

The following methods, while usable from anywhere, are primarily intended for developers wishing to subclass autodie::exception, write code that registers custom error messages, or otherwise work closely with the autodie::exception model.

register

autodie::exception->register( 'CORE::open' => \&mysub );

The register method allows for the registration of a message handler for a given subroutine. The full subroutine name including the package should be used.

Registered message handlers will receive the autodie::exception object as the first parameter.

add_file_and_line

say "Problem occurred",$@->add_file_and_line;

Returns the string at %s line %d, where %s is replaced with the filename, and %d is replaced with the line number.

Primarily intended for use by format handlers.

stringify

say "The error was: ",$@->stringify;

Formats the error as a human readable string. Usually there's no reason to call this directly, as it is used automatically if an autodie::exception object is ever used as a string.

Child classes can override this method to change how they're stringified.

format_default

my $error_string = $E->format_default;

This produces the default error string for the given exception, without using any registered message handlers. It is primarily intended to be called from a message handler when they have been passed an exception they don't want to format.

Child classes can override this method to change how default messages are formatted.

new

my $error = autodie::exception->new(
    args => \@_,
    function => "CORE::open",
    errno => $!,
    context => 'scalar',
    return => undef,
);

Creates a new autodie::exception object. Normally called directly from an autodying function. The function argument is required, its the function we were trying to call that generated the exception. The args parameter is optional.

The errno value is optional. In versions of autodie::exception 1.99 and earlier the code would try to automatically use the current value of $!, but this was unreliable and is no longer supported.

Atrributes such as package, file, and caller are determined automatically, and cannot be specified.

SEE ALSO

autodie, autodie::exception::system

LICENSE

Copyright (C)2008 Paul Fenwick

This is free software. You may modify and/or redistribute this code under the same terms as Perl 5.10 itself, or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5.

AUTHOR

Paul Fenwick <pjf@perltraining.com.au>