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
- Published
- Updated
- Reserved
- Assigned by
- CPANSec
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
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CISA-ADPADP (enrichment) | 3.1 | Medium5.4 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N |
| NVDNVD · Deferred | 3.1 | Medium5.4 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.23% · top 86% of all CVEs (6 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 5.4.
Weakness
Affected products
Net-Whois-Raw
- affected < 2.99044
What to do
Workaround: Apply the patch. For deployments that cannot apply the patch, convert the domain name to its A-label form, for example with Net::IDN::Encode::domain_to_ascii, before passing it to pwhois. pwhois passes all-ASCII names through unchanged.
References (7)
- https://metacpan.org/release/NALOBIN/Net-Whois-Raw-2.99044/changes (opens in a new tab)release-notes
- https://security.metacpan.org/patches/N/Net-Whois-Raw/2.99043/CVE-2026-19954-r1.patch (opens in a new tab)patch
- https://github.com/regru/Net-Whois-Raw/issues/34 (opens in a new tab)issue-tracking
- https://github.com/regru/Net-Whois-Raw/pull/35 (opens in a new tab)issue-tracking
- https://metacpan.org/release/PJCJ/Net-IDN-Encode-2.590-TRIAL/view/lib/Net/IDN/Punycode.pm#WARNING (opens in a new tab)
- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5891#section-5.2 (opens in a new tab)technical-description
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/10/05/9 (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)
- 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://trackcve.app/cve/CVE-2026-19954)Record last updated .