diff --git a/lib/Date/Manip/Date.pm b/lib/Date/Manip/Date.pm
index bcc762c9f..455cedbc5 100644
--- a/lib/Date/Manip/Date.pm
+++ b/lib/Date/Manip/Date.pm
@@ -94,6 +94,13 @@ sub input {
 # DATE PARSING
 ########################################################################
 
+# The longest string the parsers will look at.  The time matching
+# regexp is applied unanchored, so the cost of failing to match grows
+# with the square of the length of an interior whitespace run.  Real
+# date strings are well under 100 characters.
+
+our $MAXLENGTH = 256;
+
 sub parse {
    my($self,$instring,@opts) = @_;
    $self->_init();
@@ -104,6 +111,11 @@ sub parse {
       return 1;
    }
 
+   if (length($instring) > $MAXLENGTH) {
+      $$self{'err'} = '[parse] Date string too long';
+      return 1;
+   }
+
    my %opts     = map { $_,1 } @opts;
 
    my $dmt = $$self{'tz'};
@@ -382,6 +394,11 @@ sub parse_time {
       return 1;
    }
 
+   if (length($string) > $MAXLENGTH) {
+      $$self{'err'} = '[parse_time] Time string too long';
+      return 1;
+   }
+
    my($y,$m,$d,$h,$mn,$s);
 
    if ($$self{'err'}) {