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. pwhois encodes each non-ASCII label directly using Net::IDN::Punycode and prepends xn--.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.23%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
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.
- CVSS 3.1
- 5.4 MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
- EPSS
- 0.23% probability · 14th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-176
- Source
- 9b29abf9-4ab0-4765-b253-1875cd9b441e
EPSS moved from 0.2% on 5 October 2026 to 0.2% on 26 October 2026.
References
- https://github.com/regru/Net-Whois-Raw/issues/34
- https://github.com/regru/Net-Whois-Raw/pull/35
- https://metacpan.org/release/NALOBIN/Net-Whois-Raw-2.99044/changes
- https://metacpan.org/release/PJCJ/Net-IDN-Encode-2.590-TRIAL/view/lib/Net/IDN/Punycode.pm#WARNING
- https://security.metacpan.org/patches/N/Net-Whois-Raw/2.99043/CVE-2026-19954-r1.patch
- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5891#section-5.2
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/10/05/9
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.