High · published August 12, 2026
Net::CIDR::Set versions before 0.23 for Perl allow memory exhaustion and malformed set ranges via unbounded IPv6 prefix lengths.
The _encode method accepts any prefix length matching `(0|[1-9][0-9]*)` and passes it to _width2bits(), which builds the mask as `'1' x ($width + 8)`, one character per bit. The _inc() method then unpacks the packed mask into a Perl array of one scalar per byte, so the prefix length alone sets the allocation size: `::/100000000` builds a 100 MB string and a 12.5 million element array. The value being tested is parsed, not just the configured ranges: contains() builds a set from its argument, and _guess_coder() tries the IPv4 coder and then the IPv6 coder, so an IPv4-only set expands an oversized IPv6 prefix length before the mixed address width check rejects it.
Any caller that passes untrusted input to contains() or add() can exhaust process memory. A prefix length above 128 is also stored as a range that does not match the requested block: 2001:db8::/129 stringifies back unchanged, contains() of its own base address returns false, and removing it from a set drops the base address while the set still prints as covering it.