Security Advisories (26)
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-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-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-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-2018-18314 (2018-12-07)

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

CVE-2018-18313 (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-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-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-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-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-2010-1158 (2010-04-20)

Integer overflow in the regular expression engine in Perl 5.8.x allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (stack consumption and application crash) by matching a crafted regular expression against a long string.

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-2008-1927 (2008-04-24)

Double free vulnerability in Perl 5.8.8 allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (memory corruption and crash) via a crafted regular expression containing UTF8 characters. NOTE: this issue might only be present on certain operating systems.

CVE-2005-3962 (2005-12-01)

Integer overflow in the format string functionality (Perl_sv_vcatpvfn) in Perl 5.9.2 and 5.8.6 Perl allows attackers to overwrite arbitrary memory and possibly execute arbitrary code via format string specifiers with large values, which causes an integer wrap and leads to a buffer overflow, as demonstrated using format string vulnerabilities in Perl applications.

CVE-2007-5116 (2007-11-07)

Buffer overflow in the polymorphic opcode support in the Regular Expression Engine (regcomp.c) in Perl 5.8 allows context-dependent attackers to execute arbitrary code by switching from byte to Unicode (UTF) characters in a regular expression.

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-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.

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-2011-1487 (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-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-2024-56406 (2025-04-13)

A heap buffer overflow vulnerability was discovered in Perl. When there are non-ASCII bytes in the left-hand-side of the `tr` operator, `S_do_trans_invmap` can overflow the destination pointer `d`.    $ perl -e '$_ = "\x{FF}" x 1000000; tr/\xFF/\x{100}/;'    Segmentation fault (core dumped) It is believed that this vulnerability can enable Denial of Service and possibly Code Execution attacks on platforms that lack sufficient defenses.

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-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.

NAME

find - traverse a file tree

finddepth - traverse a directory structure depth-first

SYNOPSIS

use File::Find;
find(\&wanted, '/foo', '/bar');
sub wanted { ... }

use File::Find;
finddepth(\&wanted, '/foo', '/bar');
sub wanted { ... }

use File::Find;
find({ wanted => \&process, follow => 1 }, '.');

DESCRIPTION

The first argument to find() is either a hash reference describing the operations to be performed for each file, or a code reference.

Here are the possible keys for the hash:

wanted

The value should be a code reference. This code reference is called the wanted() function below.

bydepth

Reports the name of a directory only AFTER all its entries have been reported. Entry point finddepth() is a shortcut for specifying { bydepth = 1 }> in the first argument of find().

preprocess

The value should be a code reference. This code reference is used to preprocess a directory; it is called after readdir() but before the loop that calls the wanted() function. It is called with a list of strings and is expected to return a list of strings. The code can be used to sort the strings alphabetically, numerically, or to filter out directory entries based on their name alone.

postprocess

The value should be a code reference. It is invoked just before leaving the current directory. It is called in void context with no arguments. The name of the current directory is in $File::Find::dir. This hook is handy for summarizing a directory, such as calculating its disk usage.

follow

Causes symbolic links to be followed. Since directory trees with symbolic links (followed) may contain files more than once and may even have cycles, a hash has to be built up with an entry for each file. This might be expensive both in space and time for a large directory tree. See follow_fast and follow_skip below. If either follow or follow_fast is in effect:

  • It is guaranteed that an lstat has been called before the user's wanted() function is called. This enables fast file checks involving _.

  • There is a variable $File::Find::fullname which holds the absolute pathname of the file with all symbolic links resolved

follow_fast

This is similar to follow except that it may report some files more than once. It does detect cycles, however. Since only symbolic links have to be hashed, this is much cheaper both in space and time. If processing a file more than once (by the user's wanted() function) is worse than just taking time, the option follow should be used.

follow_skip

follow_skip==1, which is the default, causes all files which are neither directories nor symbolic links to be ignored if they are about to be processed a second time. If a directory or a symbolic link are about to be processed a second time, File::Find dies. follow_skip==0 causes File::Find to die if any file is about to be processed a second time. follow_skip==2 causes File::Find to ignore any duplicate files and dirctories but to proceed normally otherwise.

no_chdir

Does not chdir() to each directory as it recurses. The wanted() function will need to be aware of this, of course. In this case, $_ will be the same as $File::Find::name.

untaint

If find is used in taint-mode (-T command line switch or if EUID != UID or if EGID != GID) then internally directory names have to be untainted before they can be cd'ed to. Therefore they are checked against a regular expression untaint_pattern. Note that all names passed to the user's wanted() function are still tainted.

untaint_pattern

See above. This should be set using the qr quoting operator. The default is set to qr|^([-+@\w./]+)$|. Note that the parantheses are vital.

untaint_skip

If set, directories (subtrees) which fail the untaint_pattern are skipped. The default is to 'die' in such a case.

The wanted() function does whatever verifications you want. $File::Find::dir contains the current directory name, and $_ the current filename within that directory. $File::Find::name contains the complete pathname to the file. You are chdir()'d to $File::Find::dir when the function is called, unless no_chdir was specified. When <follow> or <follow_fast> are in effect, there is also a $File::Find::fullname. The function may set $File::Find::prune to prune the tree unless bydepth was specified. Unless follow or follow_fast is specified, for compatibility reasons (find.pl, find2perl) there are in addition the following globals available: $File::Find::topdir, $File::Find::topdev, $File::Find::topino, $File::Find::topmode and $File::Find::topnlink.

This library is useful for the find2perl tool, which when fed,

find2perl / -name .nfs\* -mtime +7 \
    -exec rm -f {} \; -o -fstype nfs -prune

produces something like:

sub wanted {
    /^\.nfs.*\z/s &&
    (($dev, $ino, $mode, $nlink, $uid, $gid) = lstat($_)) &&
    int(-M _) > 7 &&
    unlink($_)
    ||
    ($nlink || (($dev, $ino, $mode, $nlink, $uid, $gid) = lstat($_))) &&
    $dev < 0 &&
    ($File::Find::prune = 1);
}

Set the variable $File::Find::dont_use_nlink if you're using AFS, since AFS cheats.

Here's another interesting wanted function. It will find all symlinks that don't resolve:

sub wanted {
     -l && !-e && print "bogus link: $File::Find::name\n";
}

See also the script pfind on CPAN for a nice application of this module.

CAVEAT

Be aware that the option to follow symbolic links can be dangerous. Depending on the structure of the directory tree (including symbolic links to directories) you might traverse a given (physical) directory more than once (only if follow_fast is in effect). Furthermore, deleting or changing files in a symbolically linked directory might cause very unpleasant surprises, since you delete or change files in an unknown directory.