CVE-2026-14895

String::Util versions before 1.36 for Perl are susceptible to a regular expression denial of service. The trim and rtrim functions stripped trailing whitespace with s/\s*$//u. Because \s* matches greedily and the $ anchor fails whenever a non-whitespace character follows the whitespace, the regex engine retries the match at each offset of a long whitespace run, producing quadratic backtracking. The fix replaces \s*$ with \s+$. Any caller that passes untrusted input to trim or rtrim can trigger CPU exhaustion with a string containing a long run of whitespace.

CVSS 3.1

7.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS

0.6% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days; higher than 49% of CVEs (scores of 2026-10-25)

CWE

CWE-1333

Published

2026-07-07

Modified

2026-10-25

Record from

the NVD, synced 2026-10-25

References

• https://github.com/scottchiefbaker/String-Util/commit/f8150867aaeb8f57c59601aefb2193f2caed8745.patch
• https://github.com/scottchiefbaker/String-Util/releases
• https://metacpan.org/release/BAKERSCOT/String-Util-1.36/diff/BAKERSCOT/String-Util-1.35#lib/String/Util.pm
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/07/07/18

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