Cpanel::JSON::XS versions from 4.33 before 4.80 for Perl accept malformed UTF-8 in bare hash keys under allow_barekey in decode_hv. With utf8 and allow_barekey, which relaxed enables, a quoted key is validated as UTF-8 but a bare key's bytes are stored as a UTF-8 flagged string without any check. Malformed UTF-8, control bytes and backslashes reach the decoded hash, while malformed UTF-8 and control bytes in a quoted key or a value are rejected. Later operations on the key, including lc, uc or encoding the hash again, die with a malformed UTF-8 error.