man > perl5381delta(1)

PERL5381DELTA(1)                  Perl Programmers Reference Guide                  PERL5381DELTA(1)

NAME
       perl5381delta - what is new for perl v5.38.1

DESCRIPTION
       This document describes differences between the 5.38.0 release and the 5.38.1 release.

       If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.37.0, first read perl5380delta, which
       describes differences between 5.37.0 and 5.38.0.

Security
       This release fixes the following security issues.

   CVE-2023-47038 - Write past buffer end via illegal user-defined Unicode property
       This vulnerability was reported directly to the Perl security team by Nathan Mills
       "the.true.nathan.mills AT gmail.com".

       A crafted regular expression when compiled by perl 5.30.0 through 5.38.0 can cause a one-byte
       attacker controlled buffer overflow in a heap allocated buffer.

   CVE-2023-47039 - Perl for Windows binary hijacking vulnerability
       This vulnerability was reported to the Intel Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT)
       by GitHub user ycdxsb <https://github.com/ycdxsb/WindowsPrivilegeEscalation>. PSIRT then
       reported it to the Perl security team.

       Perl for Windows relies on the system path environment variable to find the shell
       ("cmd.exe"). When running an executable which uses Windows Perl interpreter, Perl attempts to
       find and execute "cmd.exe" within the operating system. However, due to path search order
       issues, Perl initially looks for cmd.exe in the current working directory.

       An attacker with limited privileges can exploit this behavior by placing "cmd.exe" in
       locations with weak permissions, such as "C:\ProgramData". By doing so, when an administrator
       attempts to use this executable from these compromised locations, arbitrary code can be
       executed.

Acknowledgements
       Perl 5.38.1 represents approximately 5 months of development since Perl 5.38.0 and contains
       approximately 6,100 lines of changes across 34 files from 4 authors.

       Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately
       1,300 lines of changes to 9 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.

       Perl continues to flourish into its fourth decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and
       developers. The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became
       Perl 5.38.1:

       Karl Williamson, Paul Evans, Steve Hay, Tony Cook.

       The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated from version
       control history. In particular, it does not include the names of the (very much appreciated)
       contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug tracker.

       Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules included in
       Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for helping Perl to flourish.

       For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see the AUTHORS
       file in the Perl source distribution.

Reporting Bugs
       If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the perl bug database at
       <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>.  There may also be information at
       <http://www.perl.org/>, the Perl Home Page.

       If you believe you have an unreported bug, please open an issue at
       <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>.  Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but
       sufficient test case.

       If the bug you are reporting has security implications which make it inappropriate to send to
       a public issue tracker, then see "SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION" in perlsec for
       details of how to report the issue.

Give Thanks
       If you wish to thank the Perl 5 Porters for the work we had done in Perl 5, you can do so by
       running the "perlthanks" program:

           perlthanks

       This will send an email to the Perl 5 Porters list with your show of thanks.

SEE ALSO
       The Changes file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on what changed.

       The INSTALL file for how to build Perl.

       The README file for general stuff.

       The Artistic and Copying files for copyright information.

perl v5.38.2                                 2026-06-12                             PERL5381DELTA(1)