5.26 will come with a major change in how Perl builds and runs modules. The current directory will not be in @INC when running Perl programs.

This has been overdue. For decades, including the current directory in $PATH for root has been deprecated. A user may carry a firearm (as the NRA propagates) and shoot himself in the foot - or others in the head if possible (well, that's questionable too), and face the consequences. Root (say, the USA military) should never be allowed to do such a thing, because it's not root who faces the consequences, but the whole world.

I don't know how the state of affairs is on that behalf, but perl should make it outright impossible for root to include '.' - the current working directory - in @INC and do should never be able to load and eval a file which doesn't have an absolute path, whilst running under uid 0. Ceterum censeo, -T (taint mode) should be mandatory for scripts/programs running as root.

I must be dreaming... yes, but dreaming is the only way to bear/escape from reality, other than becoming insane.