Hang, crash, or misencoding via malformed UTF-8
Published Sep 22, 2026 · Updated Sep 22, 2026
Malformed UTF-8 handling in Net-IDN-Encode before 2.590 allows attackers to hang or crash callers or produce an incorrect label. The encode_punycode entry point passes a UTF-8-flagged malformed byte string to either backend without validation, causing the XS scanner to step backward or the pure-Perl regular expression to abort or misencode it. Only direct encode_punycode calls with attacker-supplied malformed bytes are exposed; documented conversion functions reject the string first, and decoding is unaffected.
Summary
What happened
Malformed UTF-8 handling in Net-IDN-Encode before 2.590 allows attackers to hang or crash callers or produce an incorrect label. The encode_punycode entry point passes a UTF-8-flagged malformed byte string to either backend without validation, causing the XS scanner to step backward or the pure-Perl regular expression to abort or misencode it. Only direct encode_punycode calls with attacker-supplied malformed bytes are exposed; documented conversion functions reject the string first, and decoding is unaffected.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-87082
- Published
- Sep 22, 2026
- Updated
- Sep 22, 2026
- Vendor
- Paul Johnson
- Product
- Net-IDN-Encode
- Classifications
- T1499
- Attack vector
- Unavailable
- Privileges
- Unavailable
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Sep 22, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Sep 22, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
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- Affected versionversion=0 <2.590
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
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Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
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Activity data is delayed. The latest report is Sep 28, 2026.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
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Technologies
Your stack
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