CVE Database›Document archive›CVE-2020-16154

CVE-2020-16154

perl-App-cpanminus: Bypass of verification of signatures in CHECKSUMS files

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Severity

Moderate

Red Hat Product Security

7.8

CVSS 3.1

Review impact separately from score.

Published · November 23, 2021

Updated · November 22, 2025

Description

A flaw was found in the way the perl-App-cpanminus performed verification of package signatures stored in CHECKSUMS files. A malicious or compromised CPAN server used by a user, or a man-in-the-middle attacker, could use this flaw to bypass signature verification.

CVSS score applicability

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

Mitigation

This issue can be mitigated by instructing perl-App-cpanminus to only use trusted CPAN mirrors (www.cpan.org or cpan.metacpan.org) and use HTTPS for communication with CPAN servers. The cpanm command can be configured to use the specific CPAN mirror using the --from command line option by running it as:

  cpanm --from https://www.cpan.org ...

You can also set environment variable PERL_CPANM_OPT to include this command line option to avoid having to specify the URL for every cpanm invocation:

  export PERL_CPANM_OPT="--from https://www.cpan.org"

CVSS / CWE

CVSS 3.1 · 7.8
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CWE-347 · Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature