Description
URI versions before 5.36 for Perl encode non-NFC host names to non-standard punycode labels via missing normalization in nameprep. nameprep lowercases each host label but performs no Unicode normalization. IDNA requires a label to be normalized to Form C before it is encoded (RFC 5891), so a label that is not already in NFC is encoded to a different A-label than its normalized form. A label built from the precomposed Devanagari sequence U+0958 U+093E encodes to xn--72b5c without normalization but to xn--11b2fg after NFC normalization, and xn--72b5c does not round-trip back to the original label. Any caller that reads host() from a URI built from untrusted input and uses it for a security decision (an allow or deny list, an SSRF filter, deduplication, a cache key) sees the non-standard label, while a client that fetches the same URL resolves the NFC form, so the check and the fetch can disagree about the host.
References5
Metrics
- CVSS 3.1
-
6.5
MEDIUM
Score source: CNA
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N - EPSS — exploit probability
- 0% percentile: 14 · as of 8 November 2026
- CWE
- CWE-1289
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