Vulnerability record · CVE-2026-87079 · published 22 September 2026
CVE-2026-87079: Net::IDN::Punycode versions before 2.590 for Perl allow CPU exhaustion via quadratic insertion cost when decod…
Net::IDN::Punycode versions before 2.590 for Perl allow CPU exhaustion via quadratic insertion cost when decoding a long label in decode_punycode. The XS backend inserts each decoded code point into a UTF-8 buffer and finds the insertion point by scanning that buffer from the start, one character at a time. The scan runs once per code point over the output built so far, so the cost is quadratic in the label length. The pure-Perl backend downgrades its input to bytes so that substr can index it directly, but takes its working copy before the downgrade, so when the input carries the UTF-8 flag every substr on the copy scans from the start, with the same quadratic cost. Nothing bounds the label length in the to-Unicode direction. The 63-byte DNS limit is checked only when converting to ASCII, so domain_to_unicode and uts46_to_unicode pass an attacker-supplied label of any length to the decoder.
Description
Net::IDN::Punycode versions before 2.590 for Perl allow CPU exhaustion via quadratic insertion cost when decoding a long label in decode_punycode. The XS backend inserts each decoded code point into a UTF-8 buffer and finds the insertion point by scanning that buffer from the start, one character at a time. The scan runs once per code point over the output built so far, so the cost is quadratic in the label length. The pure-Perl backend downgrades its input to bytes so that substr can index it directly, but takes its working copy before the downgrade, so when the input carries the UTF-8 flag every substr on the copy scans from the start, with the same quadratic cost. Nothing bounds the label length in the to-Unicode direction. The 63-byte DNS limit is checked only when converting to ASCII, so domain_to_unicode and uts46_to_unicode pass an attacker-supplied label of any length to the decoder.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
References
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Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2026-87079), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-27). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.
