YAML::Syck versions through 1.36 for Perl has several potential security vulnerabilities including a high-severity heap buffer overflow in the YAML emitter.
The heap overflow occurs when class names exceed the initial 512-byte allocation.
The base64 decoder could read past the buffer end on trailing newlines.
strtok mutated n->type_id in place, corrupting shared node data.
A memory leak occurred in syck_hdlr_add_anchor when a node already had an anchor. The incoming anchor string 'a' was leaked on early return.
YAML::Syck versions before 1.38 for Perl has an out-of-bounds read.
The base60 (sexagesimal) parsing code in perl_syck.h has a buffer underflow bug in both int#base60 and float#base60 handlers. When processing the leftmost segment of a colon-separated value (e.g., the 1 in 1:30:45), the inner while loop can decrement a pointer past the start of the string buffer:
while ( colon >= ptr && *colon != ':' )
{
colon--;
}
if ( *colon == ':' ) *colon = '\0'; // colon may be ptr-1 here
When no colon is found (final/leftmost segment), colon becomes ptr-1, and the subsequent *colon dereference reads one byte before the allocated buffer.
YAML::Syck versions before 1.47 for Perl allow a use-after-free and double-free via an anchor node freed while still on the parser value stack.
In the bundled libsyck, when an anchor name is redefined or removed, syck_hdlr_add_anchor and syck_hdlr_remove_anchor free the node stored under that name with syck_free_node. That node can still be live on the parser's value stack, so syck_hdlr_add_node reaches it again and frees it a second time. On a normal build the 48-byte node chunk is freed twice and the interpreter aborts. Anchors need no special flags, so this is reached on the default Load path, and a 7-byte document that redefines an anchor triggers it.
Any caller that runs Load or LoadFile on an untrusted document that redefines an anchor mid-parse crashes the interpreter, a denial of service.
YAML::Syck versions before 1.47 for Perl allow an out-of-bounds read via a signed-char lookup-table index in syck_base64dec.
The base64 decoder in the bundled libsyck indexes the 256-entry static table b64_xtable with a signed char, so any !!binary byte >= 0x80 sign-extends to a negative index and reads before the table. The decoder receives the raw bytes of any !!binary node, a standard YAML type not gated by $LoadBlessed or $LoadCode, so it is reached on the default Load path.
Any caller that runs Load or LoadFile on an untrusted document containing a !!binary scalar with a high-bit byte triggers the read, and the value read can surface in the decoded result.
YAML::Syck versions before 1.47 for Perl allow a heap use-after-free via an anchor name reused as an anchors-table key in syck_hdlr_add_anchor.
In the bundled libsyck an anchor name allocated by syck_strndup is stored both as node->anchor, freed when the node is freed, and as the key in the parser's anchors table. Freeing the node frees the shared key, and a later anchor redefinition makes st_delete compare against the freed key, so st_strcmp reads freed heap memory. Anchors are a standard YAML feature and need no special flags, so this is reached on the default Load path.
Any caller that runs Load or LoadFile on an untrusted document that redefines an anchor reaches the read of freed memory.
YAML::Syck versions before 1.47 for Perl allow an out-of-bounds read via an unbounded newline scan in newline_len.
In the bundled libsyck newline_len and is_newline dereference the scan pointer, and the following byte for a "\r\n" pair, with no NUL-terminator or bounds check. During block-scalar lexing at a document boundary the scan runs one byte past the heap lexer buffer. This is an incomplete fix of CVE-2025-11683, on a lexer path the earlier fix did not cover.
Any caller that runs Load or LoadFile on an untrusted document with a block scalar at a document boundary reaches the over-read.