High · published September 22, 2026
Net::IDN::Punycode versions before 2.590 for Perl hang, crash or return a wrong label via unvalidated malformed UTF-8 in encode_punycode.
Neither backend checks that its input is well-formed UTF-8, so a string with the UTF-8 flag set over malformed bytes, as the :utf8 PerlIO layer produces from any malformed input, reaches the encoder unchecked. On perl 5.32 and later the XS backend reports a malformed sequence with a length of `(STRLEN)-1`, so the scan steps back one byte instead of forward and never ends. On earlier perls the XS returns a valid label for a different name. The pure-Perl backend runs a regex over the flagged string. Depending on the bytes, it aborts with SIGBUS on perl 5.28 and later, dies with a panic, or returns a wrong label.
The documented conversion functions match the label against Unicode properties first and that match dies on such a string, so only a direct call to encode_punycode reaches the defect. The decoder is not affected.
A direct caller encoding attacker-supplied bytes hangs, crashes or gets a label for a name the input never held.