Security Advisories (5)
CVE-2023-47038 (2023-10-30)

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

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-2025-40909 (2025-05-30)

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

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.

NAME

File::Spec::Win32 - methods for Win32 file specs

SYNOPSIS

require File::Spec::Win32; # Done internally by File::Spec if needed

DESCRIPTION

See File::Spec::Unix for a documentation of the methods provided there. This package overrides the implementation of these methods, not the semantics.

devnull

Returns a string representation of the null device.

tmpdir

Returns a string representation of the first existing directory from the following list:

$ENV{TMPDIR}
$ENV{TEMP}
$ENV{TMP}
SYS:/temp
C:\system\temp
C:/temp
/tmp
/

The SYS:/temp is preferred in Novell NetWare and the C:\system\temp for Symbian (the File::Spec::Win32 is used also for those platforms).

If running under taint mode, and if the environment variables are tainted, they are not used.

case_tolerant

MSWin32 case-tolerance depends on GetVolumeInformation() $ouFsFlags == FS_CASE_SENSITIVE, indicating the case significance when comparing file specifications. Since XP FS_CASE_SENSITIVE is effectively disabled for the NT subsubsystem. See http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2007-07/msg00891.html Default: 1

file_name_is_absolute

As of right now, this returns 2 if the path is absolute with a volume, 1 if it's absolute with no volume, 0 otherwise.

catfile

Concatenate one or more directory names and a filename to form a complete path ending with a filename

canonpath

No physical check on the filesystem, but a logical cleanup of a path. On UNIX eliminated successive slashes and successive "/.". On Win32 makes

dir1\dir2\dir3\..\..\dir4 -> \dir\dir4 and even
dir1\dir2\dir3\...\dir4   -> \dir\dir4
splitpath
($volume,$directories,$file) = File::Spec->splitpath( $path );
($volume,$directories,$file) = File::Spec->splitpath( $path,
                                                      $no_file );

Splits a path into volume, directory, and filename portions. Assumes that the last file is a path unless the path ends in '\\', '\\.', '\\..' or $no_file is true. On Win32 this means that $no_file true makes this return ( $volume, $path, '' ).

Separators accepted are \ and /.

Volumes can be drive letters or UNC sharenames (\\server\share).

The results can be passed to "catpath" to get back a path equivalent to (usually identical to) the original path.

splitdir

The opposite of catdir().

@dirs = File::Spec->splitdir( $directories );

$directories must be only the directory portion of the path on systems that have the concept of a volume or that have path syntax that differentiates files from directories.

Unlike just splitting the directories on the separator, leading empty and trailing directory entries can be returned, because these are significant on some OSs. So,

File::Spec->splitdir( "/a/b/c" );

Yields:

( '', 'a', 'b', '', 'c', '' )
catpath

Takes volume, directory and file portions and returns an entire path. Under Unix, $volume is ignored, and this is just like catfile(). On other OSs, the $volume become significant.

Note For File::Spec::Win32 Maintainers

Novell NetWare inherits its File::Spec behaviour from File::Spec::Win32.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2004,2007 by the Perl 5 Porters. All rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

See File::Spec and File::Spec::Unix. This package overrides the implementation of these methods, not the semantics.