published October 19, 2026
Cpanel::JSON::XS versions from 4.33 before 4.80 for Perl miss duplicate non-ASCII bare keys, allowing type confusion under dupkeys_as_arrayref in decode_hv.
With allow_barekey, which relaxed enables, a bare key containing a non-ASCII byte is stored as UTF-8 but looked up as raw bytes, so a repeated key escapes the duplicate-key check and replaces the earlier value.
From 4.41, under dupkeys_as_arrayref, a bare repeat replaces the array that collects a key's values with a plain value, and the next quoted repeat pushes onto that value as if it were an array. A JSON integer there is dereferenced as a pointer.
Untrusted JSON decoded with relaxed and dupkeys_as_arrayref can crash the process or dereference an address chosen by a JSON number.