CVE-2026-14895String::Util versions before 1.36 for Perl are susceptible to a regular expression denial of service
- 7.5HighCVSS base score
- 0.63%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 49% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
String::Util versions before 1.36 for Perl are susceptible to a regular expression denial of service. The trim and rtrim functions stripped trailing whitespace with s/\s*$//u. Because \s* matches greedily and the $ anchor fails whenever a non-whitespace character follows the whitespace, the regex engine retries the match at each offset of a long whitespace run, producing quadratic backtracking. The fix replaces \s*$ with \s+$. Any caller that passes untrusted input to trim or rtrim can trigger CPU exhaustion with a string containing a long run of whitespace.
Timeline
ID reserved
By CPANSec
- 1 day later
· 1 day later
Published
- 1 day later
· 1 day later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CISA-ADPADP (enrichment) | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Deferred | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.63% · top 49% of all CVEs (14 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.5.
Affected products
- affected < 1.36
What to do
Solution: Upgrade to version 1.36 or later.
Workaround: For deployments that cannot upgrade, enforce a maximum length on strings before passing them to the trim and rtrim functions. Note that the HTML form field maxlength attribute is only enforced client-side.
References
References4
- https://github.com/scottchiefbaker/String-Util/commit/f8150867aaeb8f57c59601aefb2193f2caed8745.patch (opens in a new tab)patch
- https://metacpan.org/release/BAKERSCOT/String-Util-1.36/diff/BAKERSCOT/String-Util-1.35#lib/String/Util.pm (opens in a new tab)
- https://github.com/scottchiefbaker/String-Util/releases (opens in a new tab)release-notes
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/07/07/18 (opens in a new tab)
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-42127 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-14895)Record last updated .