Email AddressApplication · Email Address Project
CVE-2015-7686
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedAlgorithmic complexity vulnerability in Address.pm in the Email-Address module 1.908 and earlier for Perl allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) via a crafted string containing a list of e-mail addresses in conjunction with parenthesis characters that can be associated with nested comments. NOTE: the default configuration in 1.908 mitigates this vulnerability but misparses certain realistic comments.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceAlgorithmic complexity (ReDoS) vulnerability in Address.pm in the Email-Address Perl module allows remote attackers to cause denial of service via crafted email strings containing parentheses characters that trigger catastrophic backtracking in nested comment parsing, causing excessive CPU consumption.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data
Email AddressApplication
<= 1.908CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Authentication
- None
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- Complete
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Check installed Email-Address module versionRun `perl -MEmail::Address -e 'print $Email::Address::VERSION'` or check via `cpan -l | grep Email-Address`Affected if Version is 1.908 or lower
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Identify scripts using Email::Address for parsingSearch codebase for 'use Email::Address' or 'Email::Address->parse' in Perl filesAffected if Module is loaded and used to parse email addresses
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Confirm parsing of emails with commentsReview if application code passes email strings containing parentheses (comments) to Email::Address::parseAffected if Email::Address parses addresses containing parentheses in comments
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Test for ReDoS condition with crafted inputIf Email::Address is in use, test parsing with input like 'test (comment (nested))@example.com' and monitor CPU usageAffected if Parsing the test input causes excessive CPU consumption or timeout, indicating vulnerable backtracking
User is affected if Email::Address version 1.908 or lower is installed AND the module parses email addresses containing parentheses characters in comments.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataUpgrade Email-Address module to version 1.909 or later; the default configuration in 1.908 provides mitigation but causes parsing issues with realistic comments, so a full upgrade is recommended.
Fix this in Email Address
Scoped from the published advisory
- Consultation1.0 h
- Implementation2.0 h
- Testing2.0 h
- Review / QA1.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $1,664.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2015-7686 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2015-7686 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.
- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data