ctime, in standard UNIX semantics, is not the creation time of the file. It is a timestamp updated whenever the file or directory's inode is updated (e.g. with chmod or chown, or when utime(2) is called on the file itself). It can be thought as a "change time" but definitely it is not the "creation time".

As far as I know it cannot be altered without low level editing of the partition where the inode resides.

So, ruffing, you're out of luck twice: once because ctime cannot be altered, twice because it is not the creation time. This also means that it's probably a good idea to follow theorbtwo's suggestion and change your Perl scripts: you're not relying on the creation time of the inode, but rather on the time it was last updated, which can be totally different.

-- TMTOWTDI