CVE-2026-19954
Net::Whois::Raw versions before 2.99044 for Perl ship a pwhois command-line tool that queries WHOIS for the wrong domain for unicode domain names
- State
- Published
- Severity
- 5.4 Medium
- Published
- Oct 5, 2026
- Updated
- Oct 6, 2026
- Reserved
- Aug 15, 2026
Description
Net::Whois::Raw versions before 2.99044 for Perl ship a pwhois command-line tool that queries WHOIS for the wrong domain for unicode domain names.
pwhois encodes each non-ASCII label directly using Net::IDN::Punycode and prepends xn--. Apart from lowercasing ASCII and Cyrillic letters, it skips the IDNA mapping and normalization steps, so a label with other uppercase letters, or not in NFC, encodes to a different A-label than its IDNA form. For example, a label of U+00C9 followed by "cole" encodes to "xn--cole-pka" rather than "xn--cole-9oa".
The Net::Whois::Raw library modules are not affected.
Scores
| CVSS | Score | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | 5.4 Medium | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N | CISA-ADP |
Weaknesses
- CWE-176 Improper Handling of Unicode Encoding
Affected Products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
Net-Whois-Raw |
|
References
- https://metacpan.org/release/NALOBIN/Net-Whois-Raw-2.99044/changesrelease-notes
- https://security.metacpan.org/patches/N/Net-Whois-Raw/2.99043/CVE-2026-19954-r1.patchpatch
- https://github.com/regru/Net-Whois-Raw/issues/34issue-tracking
- https://github.com/regru/Net-Whois-Raw/pull/35issue-tracking
- https://metacpan.org/release/PJCJ/Net-IDN-Encode-2.590-TRIAL/view/lib/Net/IDN/Punycode.pm#WARNING
- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5891#section-5.2technical-description
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/10/05/9
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