VulnerabilityPublished 30 Oct 2026

CVE-2026-115865: Starlet (Perl module) · Excessive Memory Allocation

Affects Starlet (Perl module)Source CVE Database V5

Compare

Not known to be exploited : upgrade to 0.33 soon.

Data as of 30 Oct 2026, 13:05 UTC

Severity

High

Rated High by Threat Radar's AI analysis · CVSS not yet scored by NVD

Thin evidence

One scorer or none

Patch: Available – fixed in 0.33

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 30 Oct 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 30 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade Starlet (Perl module) to 0.33.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Starlet	Affected <0.33	Fixed in 0.33
CPANStarlet`pkg:cpan/Starlet`Other threats	Affected <0.33	Fixed in 0.33

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

Upgrade Starlet to version 0.33 or later, where this issue is fixed. No other mitigation is indicated by the vendor advisory.

Description

Starlet versions before 0.33 for Perl contain a vulnerability where a remote attacker can send a request with a large Content-Length header, causing the worker process to exhaust memory and exit with an uncatchable error. This leads to a denial of service by forcing worker restarts with minimal requests.

Impact

An attacker can remotely cause denial of service by forcing worker processes to exit due to memory exhaustion. This disrupts service availability by repeatedly killing workers with minimal request payloads.

Summary

The vulnerability in Starlet prior to version 0.33 arises from the handling of the Content-Length header in HTTP requests. When a request declares a large Content-Length, the server attempts to allocate a buffer of that size before any data arrives. If the declared size exceeds available memory, the worker process terminates with an out-of-memory error that cannot be caught by the application. This allows a remote attacker to cause repeated worker restarts by sending small requests with large declared Content-Length values.

CWE-789Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value (opens in a new tab)
Variant weakness
The product allocates memory based on an untrusted, large size value, but it does not ensure that the size is within expected limits, allowing arbitrary amounts of memory to be allocated.
Implementation · Architecture and Design
Perform adequate input validation against any value that influences the amount of memory that is allocated. Define an appropriate strategy for handling requests that exceed the limit, and consider supporting a configuration option so that the administrator can extend the amount of memory to be used if necessary.
Operation
Run your program using system-provided resource limits for memory. This might still cause the program to crash or exit, but the impact to the rest of the system will be minimized.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V8.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
V13.4.1 (opens in a new tab)
V11.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

Community reviews

Loading reviews…

Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 30 Oct 2026, 13:05 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-789

Technical details

References

Community reviews

Related threats