Perl versions before 5.40.5-RC1, from 5.41.0 before 5.42.3-RC1, from 5.43.0 before 5.43.10 produce silently incorrect regular expression matches when an alternation of more than 65535 fixed string branches is compiled into a trie in Perl_study_chunk.
When such branches are combined into a trie, the delta between the first branch and the shared tail is stored in a 16-bit field. A branch count above 65535 overflows the field, and the trie's match decision table is truncated with no warning or error.
A pattern of this shape produces false positive matches (matching strings it should not) and false negative matches (failing to match strings it should). When such a pattern gates an access or filtering decision, the result is wrong.
References
| Link | Resource |
|---|---|
| https://github.com/Perl/perl5/commit/03f74bbbd3a68350d926ee93d56ee4808c28c4c7.patch | Patch |
| https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/23388 | Issue Tracking |
| http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/07/13/5 | Mailing List Patch Third Party Advisory |
Configurations
History
No history.
Information
Published : 2026-07-13 17:16
Updated : 2026-09-08 22:17
NVD link : CVE-2026-13221
Mitre link : CVE-2026-13221
CVE.ORG link : CVE-2026-13221
JSON object : View
Products Affected
perl
- perl
CWE
CWE-190
Integer Overflow or Wraparound
