CVE-2024-56406

Perl is vulnerable to a heap buffer overflow when transliterating non-ASCII bytes

Severity Score

8.6

*CVSS v3.1

Exploit Likelihood

*EPSS

Affected Versions

*CPE

Public Exploits

*Multiple Sources

Exploited in Wild

*KEV

Decision

Attend

*SSVC

Descriptions

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.

Nathan Mills discovered a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the implementation of the Perl programming language when transliterating non-ASCII bytes with tr///, which may result in denial of service, or potentially the execution of arbitrary code.

*Credits: Nathan Mills

CVSS Scores

Attack Vector

Network

Attack Complexity

Low

Privileges Required

None

User Interaction

None

Scope

Unchanged

Confidentiality

Low

Integrity

Low

Availability

High

Attack Vector

Network

Attack Complexity

Low

Privileges Required

None

User Interaction

None

Scope

Unchanged

Confidentiality

High

Integrity

High

Availability

High

Attack Vector

Network

Attack Complexity

Low

Authentication

None

Confidentiality

Partial

Integrity

Partial

Availability

Partial

* Common Vulnerability Scoring System

SSVC

Decision:Attend

Exploitation

None

Automatable

Yes

Tech. Impact

Partial

* Organization's Worst-case Scenario

Timeline

2024-12-23 CVE Reserved
2025-04-13 CVE Published
2025-04-18 CVE Updated
2025-04-19 EPSS Updated
---------- Exploited in Wild
---------- KEV Due Date
---------- First Exploit

CWE

CWE-122: Heap-based Buffer Overflow
CWE-787: Out-of-bounds Write

CAPEC

References (5)

URL	Tag	Source
https://metacpan.org/release/SHAY/perl-5.38.4/changes	Release Notes
https://metacpan.org/release/SHAY/perl-5.40.2/changes	Release Notes
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/04/13/3
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/04/13/4

URL	Date	SRC

URL	Date	SRC
https://github.com/Perl/perl5/commit/87f42aa0e0096e9a346c9672aa3a0bd3bef8c1dd.patch	2025-04-13

URL	Date	SRC

Affected Vendors, Products, and Versions

Vendor		Product				Version		Other		Status
Vendor	Product	Version	Other	Status	<-- -->	Vendor	Product	Version	Other	Status
Perl Search vendor "Perl"		Perl Search vendor "Perl" for product "Perl"				>= 5.41.0 <= 5.41.10 Search vendor "Perl" for product "Perl" and version " >= 5.41.0 <= 5.41.10"		en		Affected