CVE-2026-14741 PUBLISHED

HTTP::Date versions before 6.08 for Perl allow CPU exhaustion via polynomial regex backtracking in parse_date

Assigner: CPANSec
Reserved: 04.07.2026 Published: 17.07.2026 Updated: 17.07.2026

HTTP::Date versions before 6.08 for Perl allow CPU exhaustion via polynomial regex backtracking in parse_date.

parse_date() matches the date string against a chain of alternative regexes, and str2time() delegates to it. Several of these patterns place unbounded quantifiers next to each other before a trailing \s*$ anchor. A valid date prefix followed by a long interior run of digits, letters, or whitespace and a single trailing byte that defeats the final match forces the engine to repartition the run, giving polynomial (about quadratic) backtracking. A header value of a few tens of kilobytes runs for tens of seconds of CPU.

HTTP::Date parses timestamps such as HTTP Date, Expires, and Last-Modified headers, which commonly originate from untrusted sources. Any caller that passes an untrusted date header to str2time() or parse_date() can be driven to consume unbounded CPU, a denial of service.

Product Status

Vendor OALDERS
Product HTTP::Date
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0 to 6.08 (excl.)

Solutions

Upgrade to HTTP::Date 6.08 or later, which rejects input longer than 64 characters before the date-parsing regexes run.

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-1333 Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity CWE