A heap buffer overflow vulnerability was discovered in Perl.
Release branches 5.34, 5.36, 5.38 and 5.40 are affected, including development versions from 5.33.1 through 5.41.10.
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.
A crafted regular expression when compiled by perl 5.30.0 through 5.38.0 can cause a one attacker controlled byte buffer overflow in a heap allocated buffer
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.
Perl threads have a working directory race condition where file operations may target unintended paths.
If a directory handle is open at thread creation, the process-wide current working directory is temporarily changed in order to clone that handle for the new thread, which is visible from any third (or more) thread already running.
This may lead to unintended operations such as loading code or accessing files from unexpected locations, which a local attacker may be able to exploit.
The bug was introduced in commit 11a11ecf4bea72b17d250cfb43c897be1341861e and released in Perl version 5.13.6
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.