Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-16766 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-16766 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-16766?
- Informational severity, with a CVSS score of 8.8, published 25 July 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Perl CPAN Catalyst-View-Wkhtmltopdf < 0.6.1.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-16766?
- A patch was published on 2026-07-24: Version 0.6.1 released to address the vulnerability Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-16766 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-16766?
- Check whether you run Perl CPAN Catalyst-View-Wkhtmltopdf at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
The Catalyst::View::Wkhtmltopdf::render() function constructs shell commands using plain string interpolation and executes them via backticks without proper quoting or escaping. Specifically, seven documented render options (page_size, orientation, page_width, page_height, and various margins) are read from the request-scoped stash and interpolated verbatim into the command string. An attacker can provide malicious values for these options (e.g., 'a4; id #') to achieve Remote Code Execution (RCE) as the web-server user. While version 0.6.0 attempted to address this, the fix was incomplete; version 0.6.1 provides the full patch. Notably, the underlying wkhtmltopdf project is end-of-life.
Affected products
- Perl CPAN Catalyst-View-Wkhtmltopdf < 0.6.1
Timeline
- 2026-07-24: advisory: GitHub Security Advisory GHSA-42w4-jj8w-6p98 published
- 2026-07-25: disclosed: CVE-2026-16766 published
- 2026-07-24: patched: Version 0.6.1 released to address the vulnerability