CVE-2026-116270 — MIME::Words versions before 5.521 for Perl allow memory exhaustion via repeated "=?" sequences in decode_mimewords

Affected: MIME-tools

MIME::Words versions before 5.521 for Perl allow memory exhaustion via repeated "=?" sequences in decode_mimewords.

For each "=?" that does not start a complete encoded word, decode_mimewords appends an error message containing the whole input string to $@. A boundary of 8,000 "=?" pairs (16,000 bytes) adds 8,000 copies of itself to $@, about 128 MB.

From version 5.518, MIME::Parser decodes every multipart boundary this way, so a remote sender can exhaust the memory of the parsing process with one Content-Type header.

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CVE-2026-116270 — MIME::Words versions before 5.521 for Perl allow memory exhaustion via repeated "=?" sequences in decode_mimewords