Security Advisories (8)
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-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

Thread::Semaphore - Thread-safe semaphores

VERSION

This document describes Thread::Semaphore version 2.13

SYNOPSIS

use Thread::Semaphore;
my $s = Thread::Semaphore->new();
$s->down();   # Also known as the semaphore P operation.
# The guarded section is here
$s->up();     # Also known as the semaphore V operation.

# Decrement the semaphore only if it would immediately succeed.
if ($s->down_nb()) {
    # The guarded section is here
    $s->up();
}

# Forcefully decrement the semaphore even if its count goes below 0.
$s->down_force();

# The default value for semaphore operations is 1
my $s = Thread::Semaphore->new($initial_value);
$s->down($down_value);
$s->up($up_value);
if ($s->down_nb($down_value)) {
    ...
    $s->up($up_value);
}
$s->down_force($down_value);

DESCRIPTION

Semaphores provide a mechanism to regulate access to resources. Unlike locks, semaphores aren't tied to particular scalars, and so may be used to control access to anything you care to use them for.

Semaphores don't limit their values to zero and one, so they can be used to control access to some resource that there may be more than one of (e.g., filehandles). Increment and decrement amounts aren't fixed at one either, so threads can reserve or return multiple resources at once.

METHODS

->new()
->new(NUMBER)

new creates a new semaphore, and initializes its count to the specified number (which must be an integer). If no number is specified, the semaphore's count defaults to 1.

->down()
->down(NUMBER)

The down method decreases the semaphore's count by the specified number (which must be an integer >= 1), or by one if no number is specified.

If the semaphore's count would drop below zero, this method will block until such time as the semaphore's count is greater than or equal to the amount you're downing the semaphore's count by.

This is the semaphore "P operation" (the name derives from the Dutch word "pak", which means "capture" -- the semaphore operations were named by the late Dijkstra, who was Dutch).

->down_nb()
->down_nb(NUMBER)

The down_nb method attempts to decrease the semaphore's count by the specified number (which must be an integer >= 1), or by one if no number is specified.

If the semaphore's count would drop below zero, this method will return false, and the semaphore's count remains unchanged. Otherwise, the semaphore's count is decremented and this method returns true.

->down_force()
->down_force(NUMBER)

The down_force method decreases the semaphore's count by the specified number (which must be an integer >= 1), or by one if no number is specified. This method does not block, and may cause the semaphore's count to drop below zero.

->down_timed(TIMEOUT)
->down_timed(TIMEOUT, NUMBER)

The down_timed method attempts to decrease the semaphore's count by 1 or by the specified number within the specified timeout period given in seconds (which must be an integer >= 0).

If the semaphore's count would drop below zero, this method will block until either the semaphore's count is greater than or equal to the amount you're downing the semaphore's count by, or until the timeout is reached.

If the timeout is reached, this method will return false, and the semaphore's count remains unchanged. Otherwise, the semaphore's count is decremented and this method returns true.

->up()
->up(NUMBER)

The up method increases the semaphore's count by the number specified (which must be an integer >= 1), or by one if no number is specified.

This will unblock any thread that is blocked trying to down the semaphore if the up raises the semaphore's count above the amount that the down is trying to decrement it by. For example, if three threads are blocked trying to down a semaphore by one, and another thread ups the semaphore by two, then two of the blocked threads (which two is indeterminate) will become unblocked.

This is the semaphore "V operation" (the name derives from the Dutch word "vrij", which means "release").

NOTES

Semaphores created by Thread::Semaphore can be used in both threaded and non-threaded applications. This allows you to write modules and packages that potentially make use of semaphores, and that will function in either environment.

SEE ALSO

Thread::Semaphore on MetaCPAN: https://metacpan.org/release/Thread-Semaphore

Code repository for CPAN distribution: https://github.com/Dual-Life/Thread-Semaphore

threads, threads::shared

Sample code in the examples directory of this distribution on CPAN.

MAINTAINER

Jerry D. Hedden, <jdhedden AT cpan DOT org>

LICENSE

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