Take a look at Config::General and the other Config modules:

use strict;
use Config::General;
use Data::Dumper;

my $conf = Config::General->new('/usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf');
my %conf = $conf->getall;

print Dumper \%conf;
[download]

As for security, as long as you are not executing arbitrary commands you should be alright.

Also, why are you doing this:

my $server_from  = "\"Foo Reflector\" <er\@foo.bar>";
[download]

when you can use single quotes:

my $server_from  = '"Foo Reflector" <er@foo.bar>';
[download]