Answer in brief
CVE-2026-64194 records a Unknown severity vulnerability in Net::DNS versions through 1.55 for Perl allow Denial of Service via deep DNS compression pointer chains. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. The current feed maps NLNETLABS/Net::DNS (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
Analysis pending evidence review
HOL Guard separates source facts from reviewed analysis. See the methodology.
A CVSS score is not reported in the current record. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. Treat this as a source-backed prioritization signal, not a statement about your environment.
Analysis status
Analysis pending evidence review
Factual feed record only; HOL analysis is not approved for indexing. Read the methodology.
The current feed maps NLNETLABS/Net::DNS (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
| Package | Affected range | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| NLNETLABS/Net::DNSgeneric | 0 | Not reported |
Published upstream
Jul 20, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordSource modified
Aug 30, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordFirst seen by HOL
Aug 30, 2026
Net::DNS versions through 1.55 for Perl allow Denial of Service via deep DNS compression pointer chains. Net::DNS::DomainName::decode follows RFC 1035 compression pointers by recursing into itself with no depth limit. It is possible to construct a name which saturates the call stack (at least with larger TCP responses), leading to a potential Denial of Service. The guard `$link < $offset` prevents forward and circular chains, but still allows arbitrarily long backward chains. The per-offset cache (`$cache`) is populated at the start of each call and short-circuits only re-traverses of the same offset - the initial descent through a fresh chain still recurses at full depth. A crafted packet can chain two-byte compression pointers so that each one points two bytes earlier than the previous, producing a chain length of `offset / 2`. For the 14-bit pointer field (max offset 16383) this gives up to ~8191 recursive frames. For a TCP DNS message the limit is the 16-bit length field (~32767 frames). Perl's default C stack handles only a few thousand frames; beyond that the process receives SIGSEGV or similar, which is a denial-of-service for any application parsing untrusted DNS data. The vulnerability is triggered by `Net::DNS::Packet->new(\$wire)` i.e. any point where the library decodes a DNS message from the network.
Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.