Is cpan.org legit or a scam?
The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) is a highly trusted, 28-year-old official software repository with zero security flags and massive global authority.
Analysis Summary
No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site.
MT Intelligence
The domain has been active for over 10,000 days and is the primary source for Perl software modules worldwide. Our antivirus network shows a perfect 0/92 clean record, and the site is ranked within the top 100,000 most visited domains globally. It is officially linked to the Perl Foundation and major programming resources like perl.org. The infrastructure is stable, using high-reputation hosting and valid security certificates. There are no signs of malicious activity or fraudulent intent.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for cpan.org, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- www.cpan.org is the official home of the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, online since October 1995, hosting over 32 million Perl modules in 47,000+ distributions by 14,700+ authors.
- Heavily linked to and endorsed by official Perl resources including perl.org, pause.perl.org (for uploads), metacpan.org (search and recent uploads), and perldoc.perl.org.
- Managed under the Perl community and The Perl Foundation; content maintained in GitHub repo perlorg/cpanorg; has a dedicated CPAN Security Group for handling malware and compromised accounts.
- No scam reports, fraud complaints, or negative reviews found on review sites, Reddit, or general web searches; occasional phishing attacks target CPAN authors' @cpan.org emails or accounts, but not the domain itself.
- Domain age exceeds 28 years (10,366 days); WHOIS shows registration via Squarespace Domains II LLC; historical minor incidents (e.g., 2003 temporary redirect) resolved long ago.
- Wikipedia and perl.org confirm it as the authoritative Perl module repository, modeled after CTAN, with no association to any malicious activity.
Operated by The Perl Foundation / Perl community since 1995; domain registered via Squarespace Domains II LLC. No formal commercial business entity details found in public records.
Antivirus Engines
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Contact Verification
We fetched the page and looked for real-world contact details. Legitimate businesses almost always publish an email on their own domain, a phone number, and a postal address. Scam shops usually don't.
- No email uses the site's own domain — legitimate shops usually do.
- No postal address visible on the page.
- Phone number listed (1995-2010).
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://cpan.org/
- 2301https://cpan.org/
- 3200https://www.cpan.org/cross-domain
Server Reputation
Still, stay alert
No major threat indicators — but a clean scan does not guarantee every page is safe, and phishing emails routinely spoof real domains.
- Double-check the exact URL in your address bar
Confirm you are actually on cpan.org and not a lookalike like c-pan.org.com or an IDN homoglyph.
- Use a password manager
Password managers only auto-fill on the exact domain they were saved for — they refuse to fill lookalike domains, which is the single best phishing defence.
- OpenDiscuss this site on the forum
If you have first-hand experience with this site — good or bad — share it with the MalwareTips community.
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
Safety FAQ
Common questions about this site, answered directly from the scan data above — so the answers always reflect the latest verdict on this page.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on cpan.org. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- cpan.org passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 97/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. cpan.org presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Let's Encrypt · YR2, expiring in 69 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- cpan.org is 28.4 years old, registered on 1/30/1998 through Squarespace Domains II LLC. Scam domains are often freshly registered — a site under 6 months old warrants extra caution.
- No. All 92 antivirus engines in our malware network report cpan.org as clean.
- No. cpan.org is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- cpan.org resolves to an IP operated by Fastly, Inc. in US (usage type: Content Delivery Network). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad, but unusual geography for a brand's claimed country is one of many signals we weigh.
- Yes. cpan.org sits in the global top-100k on Cloudflare Radar, which means it has substantial real-world traffic. That does not automatically make it safe, but established brands almost always rank here and throwaway scam domains almost never do.
User reviews & comments(0)
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