CVE-2026-19954 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.
The pwhois tool queries incorrect domains for Unicode names due to missing IDNA normalization, potentially leading to inaccurate WHOIS results.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- A user has to click or open something
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-19954?
CVE-2026-19954 is a medium-severity vulnerability in perl-Net-Whois-Raw, published on 5 Oct 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Official 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.
Weakness: CWE-176
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-19954?
Linux distribution packages (1)
perl-Net-Whois-Raw openSUSE:Tumbleweed | All versions | 2.99044-1.1 |
How do I fix CVE-2026-19954?
Upgrade to a fixed version.
Is CVE-2026-19954 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-19954 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2026-19954, GHSA-m543-jcgv-fpx5, MGASA-2026-0511, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-19954, openSUSE-SU-2026:12066-1.