Vulnerability

[ Description ]Official description

Pod::Text versions before 6.1.1 for Perl allow CPU and memory exhaustion formatting a POD document whose =over nesting drives the margin to the output width. Each =over adds its indent to the margin, which wrap() subtracts from the output width to get the space available for text. When that space reaches zero, the line-splitting substitution matches the empty string, and the loop consumes no input while appending the margin padding on every pass. Formatting an attacker-supplied POD document never returns, and the output grows until memory is exhausted.

[ Fixes ]Fixes and patches

No fix or interim patch is linked from our sources yet. Check the vendor references below and limit exposure of affected systems until a fix is available.

[ Advisories ]Government CERT advisories

• BSI CERT-Bund3 Nov 2026WID-SEC-2026-4312

  IBM AIX and VIOS (Perl): Vulnerability allows denial of service Translated from German

  Risk mediumCVE-2026-82560

[ References ]References

• metacpan.org/release/RRA/podlators-v6.1.0/source/lib/Pod/Text.pm
• github.com/rra/podlators/commit/70510174f69eb54aa6d617bde4e1402cd9b7c61f.patchpatch
• metacpan.org/release/RRA/podlators-v6.1.1/changesrelease-notes