CVE-2026-7040
Published: 27 April 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-7040 is a high-severity Heap-based Buffer Overflow (CWE-122) vulnerability in Rrwo Text\. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 17.3th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2026-7040 is a heap overflow vulnerability in the Text::Minify::XS Perl module, affecting versions from 0.3.0 up to but not including 0.7.8. The issue stems from the minify functions mishandling certain malformed UTF-8 characters, resulting in heap corruption. Note that minify_utf8 is an alias for the minify function. The vulnerability is classified under CWE-122 (Heap-based Buffer Overflow) and CWE-176 (Improper Handling of Unicode Encoding), with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).
A remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit this vulnerability over the network with low attack complexity and no user interaction required. By providing crafted input containing malformed UTF-8 characters to the affected minify functions, the attacker can trigger heap corruption, leading to a denial-of-service condition through application crashes or instability, though no confidentiality or integrity impacts are possible.
Mitigation is available in Text::Minify::XS version 0.7.8, as documented in the release changes on MetaCPAN. The GitHub security advisory (GHSA-jqhf-vv4h-77h2) provides further details on the vulnerability, and it was publicly disclosed on the oss-security mailing list on 2026-04-27. Security practitioners should upgrade to the patched version and audit applications using this module for input validation on UTF-8 processing.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-25833
Vulnerability details
Text::Minify::XS versions from 0.3.0 before 0.7.8 for Perl have a heap overflow when processing some malformed UTF-8 characters. The minify functions mishandled some malformed UTF-8 characters, leading to heap corruption. Note that the minify_utf8 function is an alias for minify.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Heap overflow in Perl module enables remote crafted input to crash the application, directly facilitating T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation for DoS.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
SI-2 requires timely identification, reporting, and correction of software flaws like the heap overflow in Text::Minify::XS, directly enabling patching to version 0.7.8.
SI-10 mandates validation of information inputs to ensure consistency with expected formats, preventing heap corruption by rejecting malformed UTF-8 characters before processing in minify functions.
SI-16 implements memory protection mechanisms that mitigate heap overflows by restricting unauthorized memory access and modification during malformed UTF-8 processing.