I have replaced $ENV{'DOCUMENT_ROOT'} with hardcoded paths

Sorry I hadn't noticed that statement. Though if you knew that already, it would have been nice if your SSCCE had removed that distraction. Especially because when I ran my original code, I was able to show a taint problem with $ENV{'DOCUMENT_ROOT'} and no problem when I had an untainted variable instead. I assumed that must be the culprit, since it matched your shown code.

Taking out that, I can run an equivalent of every single line from your SSCCE script, with some extra debug prints, without flagging a taint problem.

Command: HTTP_HOST=127.0.0.1 perl -T sscce-t.pl

Output:

content-type: text/plain;

RealBin = /home1/pryrtcom
PDF::API2::VERSION = 2.043
ROOT = $root = /home1/pryrtcom/public_html
[Sat Nov  5 16:07:36 2022] sscce-t.pl: Use of uninitialized value in v
+ec at /home1/pryrtcom/perl5/lib/perl5/PDF/API2/Resource/CIDFont/TrueT
+ype/FontFile.pm line 554.
[Sat Nov  5 16:07:36 2022] sscce-t.pl: Use of uninitialized value in s
+calar assignment at /home1/pryrtcom/perl5/lib/perl5/PDF/API2/Resource
+/CIDFont/TrueType/FontFile.pm line 554.
Font => PDF::API2::Resource::CIDFont::TrueType=HASH(0x469f530)
Page => PDF::API2::Page=HASH(0x2c752e8)
Text => PDF::API2::Content::Text=HASH(0x3b97148)
set font => PDF::API2::Content::Text=HASH(0x3b97148)
set pos => PDF::API2::Content::Text=HASH(0x3b97148)
set text => 156.096
save =>




Content-type: text/plain

127.0.0.1/../output.pdf
[download]

Source:

(I tried with a font I uploaded, or one that was present on my host. Either one gave me the error when I ran the $pdf->font(...) line. I don't know if you're just not seeing that error because it's in a server logfile that you haven't checked, or whether you're not getting that warning, maybe because of using a different font or a different version of PDF::API2 -- that's one of the reasons I included the print of the module version in my code.)

But with that code, I could not replicate your taint error.

To emphasize to the advice from kcott, you need to narrow it down to which line of code is actually causing the taint problem. His example of loading a PDF and then immediately saving it (instead of loading, manipulating, and saving) will narrow it down to whether it's one of your manipulation commands that's causing the problem, or just writing the PDF to disk. Also, wrapping individual commands in eval (like I did in my first code example), with extra debug prints around, so you know exactly where it happens, would also be helpful to you. Also, if you have shell access to your host, it would be good to try running it from the command-line rather than just through the browser -- this will make it easier to see side warnings that are buried in a log file you haven't checked, and will also show if there's maybe something different going on between running through web interface and running through your host's command line.

But as my two SSCCE's have shown, there is nothing inherently taint-unsafe with any of the PDF::API2 v2.043 commands that I ran, which I believe match in spirit the method calls you showed, so the problem seems to me to be something unique about the way you are using them, or arguments that you are passing to them, rather than inherent to the library.