App::Ack versions before 3.10.0 for Perl allow memory exhaustion via an unbounded context value in a project .ackrc.
ack searches up the directory hierarchy from the current directory for a project .ackrc and loads its options. The -B and -C context options accepted any positive integer, and ack sized the before-context buffer to that value, so a project .ackrc setting --before-context=100000000 made ack allocate a buffer of 100 million elements.
A project .ackrc committed to an untrusted repository can abort ack with an out-of-memory condition.
CVSS Details
- CVSS 3.1 Base Score: 7.5
- CVSS 3.1 Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)
Covered by Rapid7
| Product | Vendor Advisory | Solution File | Added | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine Linux | — | Upgrade ack | Jul 9, 2026 | Jul 8, 2026 |
| Freebsd | — | Upgrade p5-ack | Jun 15, 2026 | Jun 10, 2026 |
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