Perl is a high-level programming language commonly used for system administration utilities and Web programming.
An integer overflow bug was found in Perl's format string processor. It is possible for an attacker to cause perl to crash or execute arbitrary code if the attacker is able to process a malicious format string. This issue is only exploitable through a script which passes arbitrary untrusted strings to the format string processor. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project assigned the name CVE-2005-3962 to this issue.
Users of Perl are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues as well as fixes for several bugs.