CVE-2026-60075 in Date::Manip
Summary
by MITRE • 07/30/2026
Date::Manip versions through 6.99 for Perl allow CPU exhaustion via quadratic backtracking in the unanchored time substitution in _parse_time.
_parse_time removes a time from anywhere in the string with the unanchored substitution `s/$timerx/ /`, where $timerx is an auto-generated alternation of time patterns reached through a leading `(?:$atrx|^|\s+)`. The engine therefore retries the match at every position of an interior whitespace run: at each start position the leading `\s+` consumes the rest of the run greedily, the time alternation fails because the run holds no digits, and the engine backtracks a space at a time across the run before advancing the start position, which is quadratic in the length of the run. No time need be present in the string for this to happen, only a long run of whitespace, and the parse time rises about fourfold for each doubling of the run: a few kilobytes of whitespace costs seconds of CPU per parse and tens of kilobytes costs minutes.
Any caller that passes an untrusted string of unbounded length to ParseDate(), Date::Manip::Date->parse() or ->parse_time() can be made to spend unbounded CPU in a single parse, a denial of service.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/30/2026
The vulnerability resides in the Date::Manip Perl module versions through 6.99, specifically within the _parse_time function that handles time pattern substitution. This flaw manifests as a CPU exhaustion issue stemming from quadratic backtracking behavior in the regular expression engine. The problematic code utilizes an unanchored substitution pattern s/$timerx/ / where $timerx represents an auto-generated alternation of time patterns constructed through a leading (?:$atrx|^|\s+). This particular regex construction creates a pathological case where the engine systematically retries matches at every possible position within interior whitespace sequences, leading to exponential computational complexity.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability exploits the greedy nature of the \s+ quantifier combined with the alternation structure in the time pattern. When processing strings containing extended whitespace runs, the regex engine attempts to match each alternative in the $timerx pattern starting from every position within the whitespace sequence. The leading \s+ component consumes the entire whitespace run greedily during initial attempts, causing subsequent time pattern alternations to fail due to lack of numeric digits. This failure triggers backtracking behavior where the engine progressively removes one space at a time from the consumed whitespace run before advancing to the next start position, creating a quadratic time complexity relationship with input length.
This vulnerability directly maps to CWE-1321, which specifically addresses Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) conditions in Perl and other regex implementations. The attack vector requires only the presence of long runs of whitespace characters without any actual time data, making it particularly insidious as it can be triggered by malformed input strings that appear benign. The computational impact grows exponentially with input size, demonstrating a clear violation of resource consumption expectations where a few kilobytes of whitespace can escalate to seconds of processing time and tens of kilobytes can consume minutes of CPU cycles.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple denial of service conditions as it affects any application that relies on Date::Manip for date parsing operations. Attackers can craft malicious input strings with carefully constructed whitespace patterns to induce CPU exhaustion, potentially causing system resource exhaustion across multiple concurrent processes. This vulnerability particularly affects web applications and services that process user-provided data through Date::Manip functions, creating opportunities for attackers to consume excessive computational resources and degrade service availability. The vulnerability is present in all ParseDate() and Date::Manip::Date->parse() function calls, making it a systemic risk across applications using this module.
Mitigation strategies should focus on input validation and sanitization at the application layer, implementing strict limits on input string lengths before passing data to Date::Manip functions. Additionally, upgrading to patched versions of Date::Manip that address the regex backtracking issue would provide permanent resolution. Security-conscious developers should also consider implementing timeout mechanisms or resource quotas around parsing operations to prevent exploitation even in environments where patching is not immediately possible. The vulnerability highlights the importance of proper regex design and testing for pathological cases, particularly when dealing with user-provided input data that may contain extended whitespace sequences.