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.
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.
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Fixes
Solution
No solution given by the vendor.
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
History
Mon, 05 Oct 2026 07:00:00 +0000
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | |
| Title | 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 | |
| Weaknesses | CWE-176 | |
| References |
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Projects
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Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: CPANSec
Published:
Updated: 2026-10-05T06:54:09.352Z
Reserved: 2026-08-15T21:45:07.158Z
Link: CVE-2026-19954
No data.
Status : Received
Published: 2026-10-05T07:16:30.820
Modified: 2026-10-05T07:16:30.820
Link: CVE-2026-19954
No data.
OpenCVE Enrichment
No data.
Weaknesses