Bug 2542563 (CVE-2026-85644)

Summary: CVE-2026-85644 perl-XS-Parse-Keyword: perl-XS-Parse-Keyword: Denial of Service via improper array reference validation
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Priority: high    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
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OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in perl-XS-Parse-Keyword. This vulnerability allows an attacker to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) or potentially execute arbitrary code by supplying crafted input to an affected application. The issue occurs because the module improperly validates arguments for list-associative operators, treating numbers or formatted strings as array references and causing the interpreter to dereference arbitrary memory addresses.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-28 16:32:21 UTC
XS::Parse::Infix versions from 0.40 through 0.49 for Perl treat a number as an array reference.

The wrapper function XS::Parse::Infix generates for a list-associative infix operator checks whether arguments are array references, but it tests using SvRV() rather than SvROK(). SvRV() reads a union slot that only holds a referent once SvROK(sv) is true, so the guard never validates that it is a reference. For an IV or NV that slot holds the number itself, SvRV() returns the caller's value and SvTYPE() dereferences it at offset 12. This will generally result in a segmentation fault.

An application that hands the wrapper a list built from decoded input (for example, from JSON) lets whoever supplies a number in that list choose the address that the interpreter dereferences.

An ordinary string's byte 12 is rarely SVt_PVAV so the guard croaks by luck, but an attacker-crafted string carrying 0x0b there passes, and the buffer is then used as an AV head, with AvARRAY taken from bytes 16-23 and its entries pushed onto the Perl stack as live SVs.

A simple proof-of-concept uses the zip operator:

    use Syntax::Operator::Zip 'zip';

    my @args = ([1], 2);
    zip(@args);