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Set `session.upload_progress.enabled=0` until the next PHP release to block an unlikely RCE vector (CVE-2026-115560).
We already recommended this for CVE-2026-109619 from Wednesday: keep it disabled.
Only applications with non-default `serialize_handler` switching it to `php` at runtime can be affected.
There is more information in the advisory on the PHP website by the PHP security team: https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-23-1
There is another PHP potential RCE vulnerability - CVE-2026-115560 - without a patch. Do not panic.
It is a non-default configuration and will not be a widespread issue.
The mitigations in this thread already fix it, if you want to panic.
Set session.upload_progress.enabled=0 till next PHP release to block an unlikely RCE vector (CVE-2026-115560). Already recommended for CVE-2026-109619 on Wednesday, keep it disabled. Only apps with non-default serialize_handler switching it to "php" at runtime can be affected.
Information advisory on PHP website by the PHP security team: https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-23-1
🚨 PHP warns of another unpatched remote code execution risk; CVE-2026-115560
The newly disclosed vulnerability is separate from the two PHP2Shell flaws patched earlier this week and is not fixed by PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 or 8.2.35.
⠀
PHP says exploitation requires an unusual configuration where an application:
• Uses php_binary or php_serialize as its session serializer
• Changes the serializer to php at runtime before session_start()
• Has session upload progress enabled
⠀
PHP considers the risk unlikely and plans to release a fix during its next regular update cycle.
Until then, administrators with affected configurations should set:
session.upload_progress.enabled=0
Applications that do not change the session serializer at runtime are not exposed through this path.
No exploitation has been reported.
Source:
https://www.php.net/
Une troisième faille critique dans PHP : la CVE-2026-115560
Pour s'en protéger en attendant la mise à jour :
"Set session.upload_progress.enabled=0 and restart every worker until the next regular bugfix release, to fully protect from CVE-2026-115560."
👉 https://cert.europa.eu/publications/security-advisories/2026-018
PHP signale une nouvelle faille RCE (CVE-2026-115560) : appliquez le même réglage que PHP2Shell https://www.it-connect.fr/php-cve-2026-115560-session-upload-progress/ #ActuCybersécurité #Cybersécurité #Vulnérabilité #PHP
Just days after emergency PHP2Shell patches, PHP issued an advisory on October 23, 2026, warning of another potential path for code execution on web servers, tracked as CVE-2026-115560.
The issue occurs only under a narrow setup involving session serialization and active session upload progress.
PHP considers the risk unlikely and is not issuing an immediate emergency fix, recommending instead that administrators turn off…
PHP has an unpatched remote code execution vulnerability, to be assigned CVE-2026-115560. Stopgap fix is to leave session.upload_progress.enabled=0 in place from a previously recommended mitigation. No further details.
‼️ BREAKING ‼️ PHP warns of another UNPATCHED REC vulnerability just 2 days after releasing emergency patches for critical PHP2Shell flaws.
New "CVE-2026-115560" affects only unusual session configurations. PHP has issued urgent mitigation guidance.
Full details → https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/urgent-php-warns-of-another-unpatched.html?m=1
Nouvelle faille pour php
https://www.it-connect.fr/php-cve-2026-115560-session-upload-progress/
PHP Warns of New Code Execution Flaw Days After PHP2Shell Patches
PHP Warns of Another Unpatched RCE Risk Two Days After Emergency PHP2Shell Patches
PHP has warned of another way an attacker could run code on a web server, two days after it shipped emergency fixes for the critical PHP2Shell flaws, The Hacker News reports. The new issue, assigned CVE-2026-115560, affects only web applications configured in an unusual way; PHP considers it an unlikely risk, is not issuing an emergency fix, and recommends a configuration change instead. https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/urgent-php-warns-of-another-unpatched.html
"We suggest you set session.upload_progress.enabled=0 until the next regular bugfix release, to fully protect from an unlikely RCE vector. This setting was already listed as a mitigation in the GHSA-6wmf-4rv5-p3rp advisory for CVE-2026-109619 published on Oct 21st, 2026. If you applied it then, keep it in place and no further action is needed.
The issue can only occur under an unusual combination of configuration and application code. An application must set session.serialize_handler to php_binary or php_serialize in its configuration and then switch it to php at runtime with ini_set() before calling session_start(). Session upload progress must also still be enabled. Applications that never change the serialize handler at runtime can keep the feature enabled. Since this setup is unlikely in practice, we are handling it in the regular release cycle and will publish a full advisory for CVE-2026-115560 with the next release."
Source: https://www.php.net/
PHP warns of CVE-2026-115560, a PHP session vulnerability that follows PHP2Shell. Disable session.upload_progress until the next bugfix release.
#PHP #CVE2026115560 #PHP2Shell #CVE2026109619 #RCE #WebSecurity #PatchManagement #CyberSecurity
Bluesky
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- Brotli
- github.com/google/brotli
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For some reason, the CVE-2026-111497 buffer overflow vulnerability in the #brotli decoder is mostly associated with #nodejs, but this is a far wider issue. Brotli compression is supported by many client-side applications processing HTTP responses. While some of them have sandboxes and a quick update cycle (read: web browsers), many don't. In particular, many devices and applications using #curl / libcurl are affected and must be updated ASAP.
https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-9v8h-qqgm-4m35
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/cve-2026-111497
Node and Python were feeling left out, so here's an RCE that needs attention. The Node issue, referred to as #Node2Shell, appears fairly exploitable. Check your Node versions and update. Check for affected Python packages as well.
https://ifin.network/t/cve-2026-111497-brotli-out-of-bounds-write-impacts-node-python/929
#git command https remote is affected by the #brotli buffer overflow vulnerability CVE-2026-111497 since it enables compression support:
https://github.com/git/git/blob/7e34d8174dcda3435d1404c9a30bef46afe6c13e/http.c#L2284
https://github.com/git/git/blob/7e34d8174dcda3435d1404c9a30bef46afe6c13e/remote-curl.c#L980
Make sure to update brotli as soon as possible.
So, uhm, sounds like #node2shell CVE-2026-111497 is not restricted to nodejs alone, but any Google Brotli consumer. I don't think that's been called out widely. Check your other integrations.
The brotli problem is indeed in the C library:
CVE-2026-111497: out-of-bounds write permits remote code execution
some light reading for people who think this only happens to php.
https://atlasum.net/blog/cve-2026-111497-nodejs-brotli-decoder
#Node2shell CVE-2026-111497-POC
https://github.com/dimasma0305/CVE-2026-111497-POC
Node2Shell : la faille Brotli qui expose Node.js à une exécution de code à distance https://www.it-connect.fr/node2shell-nodejs-brotli-rce-cve-2026-111497/ #ActuCybersécurité #Cybersécurité #Vulnérabilité
Security researchers at Imperva demonstrated that malformed Brotli data can achieve remote code execution in official Node.js builds, tracked as CVE-2026-111497.
Affected lines include Node.js 22.x, 24.x, and 26.x, involving the bundled Brotli decoder.
Node.js disclosed the flaw and released fixes on October 21, 2026.
No active exploitation had been reported as of October 22.
End-of-life lines 20.x and earlier do not receive…
https://en.hacks.gr/keno-asfaleias-sto-node-js-epetrepe-tin-ektelesi-xenoy-kodika/
Researchers Demonstrate Node2Shell RCE Exploit on Node.js Build Using Crafted Brotli Data
Malicious Brotli data can make an application on an official build of Node.js run attacker-supplied code, security researchers at Imperva have demonstrated. Their Node2Shell proof of concept ran code on the official Node.js 24.22.0 image by feeding crafted data to the bundled Brotli decoder, tracked as CVE-2026-111497, The Hacker News reports. https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/researchers-demonstrate-node2shell-rce.html
Node2Shell CVE-2026-111497: Brotli Out-of-Bounds Write
Node2Shell (CVE-2026-111497) is a critical Node.js Brotli decoder vulnerability that risks memory corruption and remote code execution. Learn affected versions and fixeshttps://thecybersecguru.com/exploits/node2shell-cve-2026-111497-nodejs-brotli-rce/
This Week in Security: Record Patch Tuesday, PHP’s Bad Time, The Oldest Vuln, AI Armies, and More
It’s no longer a proper month without Microsoft breaking its own record for security fixes, and October’s Patch Tuesday was no exception. Brian Krebs brings the roundup: more than 1,400 vulnerabilities fixed in a single batch, dwarfing September’s record of nearly 1,000, which itself was about ten times the normal monthly load. According to Tenable, Microsoft has now passed 4,000 CVEs for the year with two months still to go.
Only one of the fixes is for a vulnerability already being exploited in the wild: CVE-2026-96951, a security feature bypass in the Windows Shell affecting Windows 10, 11, and some Server versions. A .NET Framework bypass, CVE-2026-108398, was publicly disclosed before the patch, giving attackers a head start, and with modern AI tooling, it seems like not much of a head start is needed. At least 78 of the bugs are rated critical, and most of those allow remote code execution with little or no user interaction. Windows 10 holdouts can relax a little: Microsoft quietly extended free updates through October 2027. Given the pace of exploitation, this is probably the only way to prevent an Internet-scale meltdown.
Microsoft credits LLM-driven bug hunting for the volume, which leaves the poor admins who have to test and deploy all of this in an unenviable spot. Fortra’s analysis shows that only 26 Microsoft vulnerabilities have landed in the CISA KEV catalog of actively exploited bugs so far this year, so start there. For the rest, the SANS Internet Storm Center and Cisco Talos have the usual breakdowns by severity. Or, you know, just patch everything and hope for the best, which is roughly what everyone does anyhow.
The CA private key is… 4
Originally I was calling this the “big one” for the week, but this week that just keeps on giving. The private keys for eight eMudhra intermediate certificates have been compromised, and the way they were compromised is going to be a security talk punchline for years. Remember the Debian SSL and SSH key debacle? Of that scale.
Some background first. When your browser connects to a website over HTTPS, the site presents a certificate saying “I am example.com”, signed by a Certificate Authority (CA). Your browser and OS ship with a list of trusted root CAs, but roots are too valuable to use day to day, so they sign intermediate certificates, and the intermediates sign the actual website certificates. Whoever holds an intermediate’s private key can mint a certificate for any website, and every client that trusts the root will believe it. The whole system depends on those keys staying secret, and on them being generated properly in the first place.
eMudhra, an Indian CA which sells certificates under the emSign brand, had six TLS intermediates and two code-signing intermediates chaining to the emSign ECC Root CA – G3, which is trusted by Chrome and Apple, and Mozilla. A researcher identified only as Wayne proved the keys were compromised by signing the message “We have a problem here – Wayne” with each of them and sending it to the root programs.
How did Wayne get the keys? Flüpke posted one on Mastodon, and the secret value for the “EM OV TLS CA – G3C” key is… 4. Not four followed by 380 bits of randomness: the integer four. A reply quickly brute-forced the rest, and they’re all equally tiny: 56, 230, 237, 115, 155, 156, and 66. The keys were “incorrectly generated by the CA”, and anyone could recover them from the public certificates, which has been true since they were created in April 2025.
The browsers moved fast. According to The Hacker News, Chrome pushed a block within two hours of the report, and Mozilla blocked the certificates in under three, pulled the root from NSS, and shipped Firefox updates (CVE-2026-113470) for anyone with automatic updates disabled. There are no Certificate Transparency logs of rogue certificates, so modern browsers were never at risk. Everything that isn’t a browser is going to be the real problem and the extremely long tail of this fault: plenty of software never checks for revoked certificates and keeps trusting these keys until its bundled root list is updated.
Go hard-coded the eight bad keys into its standard library (CVE-2026-111943), but as Penligent points out, that only protects Go programs once they’re rebuilt with the new release. Python, Rust, Java, Node.js, curl, and most Linux distributions have updated root bundles, and the we-have-a-problem.com site has a full list, a checker, and manual workarounds for macOS, whose built-in curl and git don’t check revocation. There are also fixes for Linux, Windows, and the BSDs. Update everything, then go rebuild everything you compiled yourself. And then wonder how you’re going to update appliances, IoT devices, cameras, and everything else that fetches code over HTTPS or SSL.
php2shell: PHP gets owned by running out of memory
PHP, the language behind a significant percentage of the web had a rough week. WordPress, Drupal, Magento, phpMyAdmin, and just about every hosting control panel, major ecommerce sites, home project blogs, and even Hackaday itself was potentially impacted. Details of two critical vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, leaked onto Hacker News a day ahead of the embargo, and Huntress covers the scramble that followed as PHP rushed its release out early. Now that patches are available, Ryan Austin of Calif has published the full writeup, demonstrating pre-authentication remote code execution against important apps on default configurations, in PHP versions back to 5.4.0. That’s over a decade of PHP.
The trick is an old one, first found by Stefan Esser back in 2004. PHP enforces a memory limit for each request, and when a request exceeds it, PHP stops immediately with a fatal error. If that happens in the middle of native code updating some internal structure, the structure is left half-built, and the cleanup code that runs afterward trusts it anyhow. That’s a classic “use-after-free” style bug, where the program uses memory that’s already been released or was never properly set up, and those are frequently exploitable. Calif found ways to reliably push a request over the memory limit at exactly the right moment (deeply nested empty file uploads turn out to balloon into hundreds of megabytes of internal tables, while staying under PHP’s upload size limits), and three different places where the interruption leaves a dangerous mess. Austin found the first bug with a generally available LLM, but only because he knew PHP’s twenty-year history of memory-limit bugs well enough to point it in the right direction.
Amazon reports that its honeypots caught a php2shell exploitation attempt on October 17th, four days before the embargo lifted, and that it’s now being broadly exploited. Their advice is worth repeating: for critical bugs on internet-facing systems, measure your patch window in hours, not weeks, and start investigating from the earliest exploitation date, not the disclosure date. If you can’t patch right now, Calif suggests disabling session.upload_progress and removing the memory limit, which comes with its own obvious problems.
One word of caution: alongside the legitimate writeups, there are many self-published “corrected findings” and “proof-of-concept” posts that can’t seem to decide whether their own exploit works, while offering a downloadable “weaponized” bundle. A leaked-bug panic is the perfect time to hand anxious admins a zip file. Read the real advisories, and don’t run random proof-of-concept bundles.
A Sixteen-year-old forever-day in Broadcom WiFi
Quentin Kaiser has the long-form writeup of his Hexacon talk on a bug in Broadcom’s WiFi stack, present since at least 2010, which gives an attacker a root shell on a router from across the street. So called “parking lot” attacks that can happen from someone not even on your property have long been the boogeymen of WiFi security, and it’s been a little bit since we’ve gotten a new one.
The bug lives in WPS, WiFi Protected Setup: the “push the button on your router and then on your printer” pairing system that was supposed to save people from typing long WiFi passwords. WPS has a long and spotty security history, and this bug can be triggered over the air without knowing the network password, and without completing a WPS pairing. Kaiser’s demos show him pulling the WiFi password straight out of a router’s settings and sending it back over WiFi, and getting a fully interactive remote shell carried entirely over WiFi frames. No Internet connection required.
The really grim part is the patch history. Broadcom quietly released an incomplete fix in 2018, then suggested vendors switch to the open-source hostapd instead. For the older eCos-based chipsets that’s effectively never going to happen, which makes it a permanent “forever-day”. Broadcom refused to assign a CVE, and because Broadcom is its own CVE authority, CERT/CC closed Kaiser’s case the same day it was opened.
As of disclosure, the cable and DSL gateways he tested from three of Belgium’s four major ISPs were still vulnerable, and his napkin math puts it at over a million and a half devices in Belgium alone. Broadcom chips are, of course, sold everywhere. If you’re running ISP-provided hardware, there isn’t much you can do about the firmware. Turning off WPS can’t hurt if your router allows it, although Kaiser doesn’t say whether that blocks the attack. Disabling the gateway’s own WiFi and running your own access point that you can actually update is the safer bet.
GitLab regex bug reaches back twelve years
GitLab has released fixes for CVE-2026-110264, a maximum-severity CVSS 10.0 bug allowing unauthenticated attackers to run code on self-hosted GitLab servers. The flaw is an integer overflow when compiling a specially crafted regular expression in Onigmo, the Ruby regex engine which GitLab bundles into its own packages, so it affects every version back to GitLab 7.0 in 2014.
This is the fourth regex engine code execution bug from the same researcher in about a month (after CVE-2026-97229, CVE-2026-93577, and CVE-2026-89078), and comes with a nasty gotcha: the new fixed versions are one release past the October 12th fix, so if you diligently patched nine days ago, you’re vulnerable again. GitLab hasn’t said what’s needed to trigger the bug, so there’s no configuration workaround. If you’re running GitLab at home or in the shop, patch, and budget for some downtime while the database migrations run.
Node.js Brotli bug
Node.js shipped security updates for the 22, 24, and 26 branches, headlined by CVE-2026-111497, an out-of-bounds write in the bundled Brotli decompression library. Vercel’s advisory notes that researchers have demonstrated both memory leaks and command execution.
Node doesn’t decompress Brotli data on its own, but plenty of applications and libraries do, whether on incoming requests or on responses fetched from other servers. Vercel deployed firewall rules for traffic coming into its own platform, but no firewall can protect your code from a malicious response it goes and fetches itself. Node 20 is end-of-life and won’t be fixed. As a bonus, the same releases carry the eMudhra certificate distrust, so that’s two reasons to go update.
Header accordions and HTTP/3
HTTP/3 is the newest version of the protocol behind the web, running over QUIC (a UDP-based transport) instead of TCP. To save bandwidth, it compresses request headers using a scheme called QPACK: common headers can be sent as a one-byte reference into a table instead of the full text. Compression is great for bandwidth, but any time a small input can turn into a big output, there’s a risk of a “decompression bomb”. Similar tricks resulted in “zip bombs” in the 2000s, and what’s old is new again.
FoxIO found exactly that in seven of the ten HTTP/3 implementations they tested. One approach packs about 160,000 unique short headers into a single 1MB request; another stores one 4KB header and then references it thousands of times, a 4000-to-1 amplification. The HTTP/3 spec already says how to limit the decoded size, but implementations got it wrong in every possible way: checking only the compressed size, decompressing everything before checking, ignoring the per-header overhead, or reading the limit setting and then never enforcing it.
Fixed so far are quic-go (CVE-2025-64702), which is used by Caddy, Traefik, and Cloudflare’s tunnels; Cloudflare’s quiche (CVE-2026-12523); lsquic 4.9.0; and even Wireshark (CVE-2025-13945), whose QPACK decoder crashed during testing. Bun, the hyperium h3 Rust crate, and aioquic/mitmproxy remain unpatched. Bun gets special mention for an integer overflow that turns a single 516KB request into a permanent 100% CPU infinite loop. The lesson applies to any compression format: limit the decompressed size as you go, not just the bytes on the wire.
Metamorphic macOS ransomware
Patrick Wardle of Objective-See digs into Heartbreaker, macOS ransomware written in Rust that has sat on VirusTotal since May 2025, undetected by every antivirus engine.
Most antivirus detection relies on signatures: a hash or byte pattern identifying a known-bad file. Metamorphic malware tries to dodge signatures by rewriting itself so every copy looks different while behaving the same. Heartbreaker takes a delightfully brute-force approach: it carries its own Rust source code inside the binary, and after running, it shuffles variable names, adds junk functions, installs a Rust compiler if one isn’t present, recompiles itself, and replaces itself with the new build. It is about as subtle as a brick through a window.
As ransomware it’s not very scary. It only encrypts the Downloads folder, and uses the same hard-coded key for every victim, so Wardle simply wrote a decryptor. The rebuilding also depends on a GitHub library which has since disappeared, so it mostly fails anyhow. Wardle uses it to demonstrate his free RansomWhere? tool, which ignores signatures completely and instead watches for an untrusted process rapidly writing files that look encrypted (using a bit of entropy math). The malware can change its hash all day long, but to ransom anything it still has to encrypt the files, and that’s much harder to disguise.
UpdraftPlus vendor breached
TeamUpdraft, the company behind the very popular UpdraftPlus WordPress backup plugin, disclosed a breach of their customer database over the weekend. Names, emails, addresses, hashed passwords, and two-factor authentication settings were taken, and more worryingly, the connection keys for UpdraftCentral, their cloud dashboard for managing many WordPress sites at once. UpdraftPlus previously made an appearance back in June, when a vulnerability in the plugin was used in the Awesome Motive supply chain attack.
Those UpdraftCentral keys can send commands to every connected site, which turns one vendor breach into a remote control for potentially thousands of customer websites. TeamUpdraft has released UpdraftPlus 1.26.12 and 2.26.12, which automatically disconnect the old keys. If you or anyone you know manages WordPress sites through UpdraftCentral, log in to each site directly, update the plugin, and check for unexpected admin accounts and plugins (including the easy-to-miss “Must-Use” plugins tab).
Spyware delivered by ad network
Citizen Lab has published research showing that the Israeli ad-tech company Discover-Tech helped deliver spyware through ordinary online ads, targeting at least 45 devices at the news outlet Al Jazeera in 2024 and 2025. Citizen Lab attributes the spyware to Candiru, a commercial spyware vendor.
When you load a web page with ads, the ad slot is typically auctioned off in real time to the highest bidder, based on a profile of who you seem to be. This “programmatic advertising” system is, by design, a mechanism for running third-party content on a very specific person’s device. It’s easy to see why that’s attractive to a spyware vendor. According to Citizen Lab, Discover-Tech’s platform could profile users and infect a device just by displaying an ad, no click required. CPJ reports that the company’s ads reached nearly 200,000 websites and apps, and researchers at Confiant found them on government networks including the US Department of Defense, NATO, and the UN.
Malicious ads are nothing new, but this is the first public evidence of an ad platform being used for targeted, zero-click spyware delivery. “Don’t click on ads” has always been good advice. An ad blocker isn’t just a quality-of-life improvement; it’s attack surface reduction.
Ransomware negotiators on the wrong side
Last week we covered a ransomware “recovery” CEO charged with secretly paying ransoms while billing customers for decryption. This week, Brian Krebs reports that investigators chasing ShinyHunters (the group behind the FBI hack) have identified executives at two ransomware negotiation firms with unusually friendly relationships with the gang. Chats seized when Dutch police arrested a suspected ShinyHunters member reportedly show negotiators who knew about new victims before the victims themselves did. One Canadian executive has already been arrested, and investigators believe an executive at an unnamed, prestigious US consulting firm helped run the gang’s extortion website.
It’s not the first time: the DOJ sentenced Florida negotiator Angelo Martino to 70 months in July for feeding his own clients’ negotiating positions to the BlackCat ransomware gang, and for helping deploy ransomware against even more victims. The government seized $10 million in assets from him, including a luxury fishing boat and, for reasons unknown, a food truck.
Part of the problem is structural. Some negotiation firms charge a percentage of the ransom paid, which gives the “negotiator” every incentive to pay, and pay big. Firms which refuse to facilitate payments often just get swapped out by the insurance company for ones that will. Meanwhile, ShinyHunters is reportedly furious with Coveware, an incident response firm, for telling victims not to pay, which is probably the best endorsement Coveware could ask for.
An army of AI agents
The Verge reports that security firm Norforge found an attacker using a swarm of mostly autonomous AI agents to break into more than 100 websites, including sites belonging to John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. The agents ran on Cairn, an open-source “general-purpose problem-solving engine”: you give it a starting point and a goal, and the agents work toward it while documenting their progress. That documentation is how they were caught: the attacker’s Cairn instance was exposed to the Internet, along with about 20 others that appear malicious.
According to Reuters, the attacker described their preferred intrusion tactics in fewer than 100 Chinese characters, and each successful breach took about 23 hours. The victims say the impacted sites were standalone support pages, and Cairn’s author insists it was “never a ‘hacking tool'”. Many tools can be double-edged, but the effort balance here is hard to ignore: a short prompt and a day of waiting on one side, and defenders who have to close every hole on the other.
Staples hacked to fund a gift cards
404 Media pieced together, from an unsealed search warrant, that a Chinese organized crime ring hacked Staples in 2023 and issued more than 15,000 gift cards worth over $5 million. Staples’ internal customer support system was supposed to be reachable only from inside the company, but wasn’t. The attackers requested “heap dumps”, a debugging feature which captures everything an application has in memory, and pulled out the active login sessions of customer service reps. With those, they simply logged in as the reps and issued gift cards. A similar trick was used in a hack of payment data from Target years ago, where attackers leveraged access through the air conditioner control network into the cash register network, and then dumped credit cards directly from RAM as they were processed.
If you’ve ever wondered why debugging endpoints left exposed in production show up in every penetration test report, this is why. The gift cards were then laundered the old-fashioned way: crews of shoppers hitting Target stores with phones full of gift cards, buying Apple and Bose gear by the cartload (about $141,000 across 85 Target stores in 18 states in two days), with the goods shipped back to China. The larger ring this fed into reportedly moved over $100 million in gift cards.
PingCAP breach claims
An extortion group calling itself FulcrumSec has posted a leak site claiming a massive breach of PingCAP, makers of the TiDB Cloud managed database service. The group claims it found cloud credentials committed to PingCAP’s own source code repositories, and used them to set up a replication feed of PingCAP’s production control database that re-exported everything to the attackers every six hours for 22 days, without being noticed.
The claims haven’t been independently verified, but they’re very specific: 10.6TB of data, 115,000 customer API keys stored in plaintext, 20 million customer SQL queries, four years of connection logs with customer IP addresses, and 413 private source repositories. The attackers quote a 2022 internal security ticket noting that any member of a customer organization, even a billing-only account, could reset the root password on every database in that organization. Perhaps most damaging, support engineers allegedly pasted live customer credentials into support tickets, including cloud keys with admin access to other companies’ storage. If you’re a TiDB Cloud customer, assume your API keys, connection strings, and anything ever pasted into a support ticket are burned, and rotate accordingly.
Fake WhatsApp on the Play Store
Android Authority found a fake WhatsApp app on Google Play with over half a million downloads, a week after a fake Chrome app racked up over 100,000. The fake copied the real listing’s screenshots and description word for word, and in some cases appeared as a sponsored result when searching for the real app.
The trick that let it linger is Google Play’s “Early Access” program, which disables public reviews. Normally a fake app gets buried in one-star “THIS IS A SCAM” reviews; in Early Access, nobody can see them. As of publication it was still available. “Only install from the official store” is still good advice for family members, but it’s a little less reassuring when the official store is selling ad placement to the fake.
Meta Muse leaks via DNS
Back in September, we covered a serious vulnerability in Muse, Meta’s extremely privileged AI agent. This week, Meta suspended Muse’s chat sharing feature after researchers at Claroc found they could find and read thousands of shared conversations.
Each shared chat got its own web address, with the conversation title as part of the hostname. Hostnames get looked up in DNS, and many DNS lookups are recorded by “passive DNS” services, essentially a giant searchable history of which names have been resolved. One search returned a ready-made table of contents of shared chats. Claroc found 6,800 of them, including a small business loan application, a bank fraud alert with partial account details, and internal company documents. “Secret URL” sharing only works if the URL stays secret, and putting the secret in a DNS hostname is roughly the opposite of that.
Password1 strikes again
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office reprimanded IT provider Ogi Networks and the Welsh public sector data organization Data Cymru over a 2024 ransomware attack which exposed data on 3,300 people, most of them children. The way in? A test account named “Test2”, created in 2012, never reviewed, and protected with the password “Password1”. The local administrator accounts on three systems also shared a single password for the same twelve years.
There’s nothing exotic here, sadly. Old accounts nobody remembers, passwords that would fall to the first guess of any automated tool, and an outsourcing arrangement where each side assumed the other was handling security. None of it makes for exciting headlines, but these are the things that keep causing very real breaches.
Trezor wallets also implanted
As a follow-up to last week’s coverage of hardware implants in Ledger crypto wallets, Kim Zetter reports that Trezor’s claim of “not a single piece of evidence” that its devices were compromised doesn’t quite line up with reality. Joe Grand found implants in two Trezor wallets, bought through Facebook Marketplace and a TikTok shop, and reported them to Trezor in August.
The Trezor attack is different from the Ledger implant. Instead of adding a radio to spy on the screen, the attackers replaced the main microcontroller with one running modified (open source) firmware. The firmware “randomly” generates one of a dozen recovery phrases the attackers already know. To pass Trezor’s integrity checks, it presents a copy of the legitimate firmware for verification before switching to the malicious code. The takeaway hasn’t changed from last week: buy only directly from the vendor, and if you’re holding enough crypto to make this worth someone’s while, consider whether you can really trust any single device.
NGINX gets more critical bugs
F5 has released out-of-band (meaning outside their normal patch schedule) updates for three critical vulnerabilities in NGINX, the web server and reverse proxy that sits in front of a huge chunk of the Internet, and quite possibly in front of the services on your home lab. The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore has a summary: all three are rated CVSS 9.2, can be triggered remotely without authentication, and can crash worker processes or, under the right conditions, allow remote code execution.
The bugs are CVE-2026-15176, a heap overflow in the “alias” and “rewrite” directives; CVE-2026-97205, a use-after-free in asynchronous file I/O combined with Server Side Includes; and CVE-2026-93479, a heap overflow in the “map” directive. Code execution requires the vulnerable configuration to be in use, and requires bypassing ASLR (the randomization of memory layout which makes exploits harder to aim). Affected versions include NGINX Open Source 1.30.5 and below and 1.31.6 and below, NGINX Plus R33 through R37, and a long list of F5’s NGINX-based products, including the Kubernetes Ingress Controller.
Back in May we covered “nginx-poolslip”, where the suggested mitigation was to avoid unnamed regex capture groups in rewrite rules. The mitigation for the “map” bug this time? Use named captures instead of unnamed captures. If you’ve been putting off cleaning up those “$1” references in your config, now’s the time. For the other two, avoid “alias” inside “location” blocks (and the “$request_filename” variable), or disable AIO or SSI, until you can update.
Linux kernel bugs posted to the wrong list
Normally, security bugs in the Linux kernel are reported privately to the kernel security team, which coordinates a fix before details go public. This is “coordinated disclosure”: the bug and fix are published together, ideally giving admins a chance to patch before attackers can start writing exploits. The Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), on the other hand, is about as public as it gets.
Phoronix reports that Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, seemingly by accident, sent a batch of unpatched vulnerability reports straight to LKML. Greg Kroah-Hartman replied to each report asking about the choice of mailing list, which I can only imagine was done with remarkable restraint. The most serious two are both CVSS 9.0 remote code execution bugs in ksmbd, the kernel’s built-in SMB (Windows file sharing) server: an integer underflow in SMB Direct, and a race condition. The rest include local privilege escalation bugs in the networking code, the VMware graphics driver (an out-of-bounds write), and a stack overflow in search-domain TCP query handling, plus an information leak in the NVMe-over-fabrics target code.
Some of the bugs already have patches being tested or queued for future kernel releases, and those will presumably be expedited now. Most systems don’t run ksmbd (the userspace Samba server is far more common), but if you’ve enabled it on a NAS or a home server, it’s worth disabling until patched kernels land. As Phoronix puts it: “the bug and security reports keep on coming in the AI fueled world.”
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RE: chaos.social/users/fluepke/sta…
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Security vendor Palo-Alto plans to release patches for their flagship firewall product to fix the PHP vulnerabilities in them sometime next week, after they’ve finished scratching their arse.
🚨 CRITICITÀ PHP: PHP2Shell (CVE-2026-109618/19)
Due RCE remote critiche in PHP (CVSS 9.2) permettono l'esecuzione codice arbitrario senza autenticazione. Colpisce PHP 5.4+ in configurazione default.
Versioni patched:
8.5.12/8.4.27/8.3.36/8.2.35
⚠️ PHP 8.1 e precedenti: NO PATCH
🐀Cosa fare subito:
Inventory sistemi PHP
Aggiorna priorità web-facing
Versioni EOL: togli offline o migra
WAF come protezione temporanea
Exploit PoC già pubblici.
"Black October" marks a cybersecurity alarm, with experts warning of expanding AI-enabled hacking following a severe PHP vulnerability discovered this week. Millions of PHP2Shell exploit attempts are deploying Mirai malware via RCE flaws (CVE-2026-109618/19). Additionally, China-linked APT41 is suspected in BlackX UEFI bootkit attacks targeting Central Asian diplomats. Geopolitically, Moscow agreed to resume peace talks with Ukraine but ruled out a ceasefire (Oct 23, 2026).
Seit Bekanntwerden der zwei PHP-Schwachstellen CVE-2026-109618 und CVE-2026-109619 am 20. Oktober 2026 herrscht bei vielen Menschen Unsicherheit, ob digitale Angebote wie gewohnt nutzbar sind.
Wir freuen uns, dass wir Ihnen für mailbox grünes Licht geben können: Sie können mailbox weiterhin sicher und wie gewohnt nutzen.
Erfahren Sie, wie mailbox agiert hat: https://mailbox.org/de/news/php-sicherheitsluecke-mailbox-ist-sicher/
⚠️ PHP2Shell (CVE-2026-109618/619, CVSS 9.2): a supply chain perspective.
Everyone says "patch fast." But fast patching creates a blind spot.
In December 2025, 10 months before PHP2Shell, I simulated exactly this on Drupal: MITM + rogue SSL, fake update server, admin installs "the patch", RCE + persistence.
PHP2Shell makes this worse: urgency = less verification of update sources.
Full analysis + hardening guide:
https://dev.to/privlabs/php2shell-supply-chain-why-patching-fast-could-make-things-worse-51h6
@SymfonyStation this may be relevant for the Drupal community.
#Drupal #PHP #PHP2Shell #SupplyChain #CyberSecurity #InfoSec
No dobra, pobaliśmy się, poaktualizowaliśmy, a teraz na spokojnie spójrzmy, o co chodziło w tej panice, która ogarnęła programistów i administratorów PHP w środę.
Since the two PHP vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, came to light on 20 October 2026, many people have been unsure whether digital services can be used as normal.
We are pleased to give you the all-clear regarding mailbox: you can continue to use mailbox safely and as normal.
Find out how mailbox has responded: https://mailbox.org/en/news/php-security-vulnerability-mailbox-is-secure/
Півчетвертої ночі закінчили термінові правки на нашому сервері. Причина в тому, що в світі знайшли дві критичні вразливості в самій мові PHP. Їх назвали PHP2Shell, це CVE-2026-109618 і CVE-2026-109619. Оцінка 9.2 з 10, а для експлуатації не потрібна авторизація.
Основна наша система написана іншою мовою, але кілька окремих сервісів працювали на PHP. Ми несемо відповідальність за все, що крутиться на нашому сервері, тому закрили всі.
Що відомо станом на зараз.
Виправлення вийшли 21 жовтня у версіях 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 та 8.2.35. Старші гілки офіційних патчів не отримали.
Знайшли діри дослідники з допомогою моделей ШІ: першу версію компанія Calif ще в серпні, а Wiz незалежно виявила обидві. Дослідники кажуть, що вада існувала роками, але ШІ зробив її експлуатацію практичною.
Інформація витекла за день до виходу патчу. Спроби атак фіксували ще 17 жовтня, за кілька днів до публічного розкриття. Деякі уряди, за повідомленнями, на час відключили свої сайти.
Масштаб. PHP стоїть на близько 70% сайтів, де відома серверна мова. Це не означає, що стільки зламано: надійних цифр підтверджених зломів поки немає, і дослідники пишуть, що експлуатація складніша, ніж здавалось у перший день. Але ризик реальний, а старих версій без підтримки в мережі дуже багато.
Що зробити вам.
Перевірте, чи є PHP на сервері та в контейнерах: php -v, docker images.
Оновіть PHP і перезапустіть php-fpm або веб-сервер.
Якщо оновитись не можете одразу, вимкніть session.upload_progress.enabled.
Подивіться на дивні дочірні процеси від користувача веб-сервера і нові php файли.
Якщо сервіси були відкриті в мережі з 17 жовтня, змініть ключі та токени.
Бережіть себе і свої сервери 🙏
#PHP #PHP2Shell #Security #InfoSec #CVE #Fediverse #Linux #DevOps #SelfHosting
To complicate things, major shared hosting providers have patched #PHP against #php2shell using a backport — without incrementing the version number displayed by phpinfo.
On the plus side – and it's a massive plus – this means that for many sites, versions as old as 5.2 are protected, even though the PHP Team only released official patches for 8.2 and newer.
On the minus side, if you run a website there's no obvious way to tell whether you're using the new or old version.
This explains why, across the various websites I manage, even really old versions of PHP have build dates of Wednesday afternoon a few hours after the official fixes. It seems almost too good to be true.
CloudLinux explained: "PHP.net fixed CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 in new PHP versions […] Our alt-php and ea-php packages carry the same fix applied to the PHP version they already shipped (a backport). These packages contain the fix for both CVEs, even though the PHP version number is lower."
Then today, CloudLinux released builds to bring the version numbers in line with the official ones.
Information from #cPanel and #CloudLinux here:
Critical 9.2 RCE vulnerabilities CVE-2026-109618 & CVE-2026-109619 are live. Standard WordPress updates won't stop this file upload vector. Secure your systems now at klytron.com
#klytron #cybersecurity #infosec #vulnerability #klytron #technews
Patched my VPS with the patched #PHP from a few days ago.
Thankfully I only have 1 #WordPress site left from the half a dozen I had before. You can't hack my #Hugo static sites!
An interesting case is the repo by eness (https://github.com/eness/php2shell-CVE-2026-109618-CVE-2026-109619-PoC): First, it contained what appears to be a reimplementation of J4ck3LSyN's research.
Since then, that has been replaced with an (unattributed) copy of 9bie's exploit. The rest of the repo is mitigation information and not particularly interesting.
(3/n)
🚨 Palo Alto Networks warns PAN-OS is affected by PHP2Shell remote code execution flaws
CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 affect the PAN-OS management web interface, including the HTTPS interface and XML API service.
⠀
Affected products include:
• PAN-OS 10.2, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1 and 12.2 release trains
• All Panorama versions
• All WildFire WF-500 and WF-500-B appliances
⠀
No special configuration is required, but the risk is highest when the management interface is exposed to the internet.
Palo Alto Networks rates the product impact at CVSS 8.7. PAN-OS hotfixes are expected between October 26 and 30, while dates for Panorama and WildFire appliance fixes remain unconfirmed.
The company is not aware of malicious exploitation targeting its products.
GlobalProtect and Captive Portal are not affected.
Source:
https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2026-109618
Cloudflare observed millions of exploit attempts targeting PHP2Shell vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619) within hours of public disclosure.
The flaws enable unauthenticated remote code execution via specially crafted HTTP requests.
PHP released patches in versions 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, and 8.2.35.
While major security firms reported no confirmed compromises, Censys estimates over 34.4 million services…
PHP2Shell Exploit Attempts Hit Millions as Attackers Try to Deploy Mirai Malware
Threat actors have been observed attempting to exploit the newly disclosed PHP2Shell vulnerabilities to rope infected systems into a Mirai botnet variant called Potassium, The Hacker News reports. The attacks target CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, both rated CVSS 9.2, though weaponizing the flaws may be harder than previously thought. https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/php2shell-exploit-attempts-hit-millions.html
Hackers got a four-day head start on epic PHP2Shell vulnerability
Attackers began targeting the critical PHP2Shell vulnerabilities four days before patches were released, Amazon has disclosed, while exploit attempts seen by Cloudflare have since climbed into the millions. PHP’s maintainers shipped fixes for CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 after details leaked ahead of a coordinated release, Ars Technica reports. https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/10/hackers-got-a-four-day-head-start-on-epic-php2shell-vulnerability/
php2shell (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619) – PHP critical vulnerability fixes available | Ubuntu
https://ubuntu.com/blog/php2shell-vulnerability-fixes-available
PHP2Shell: Millions of Attacks, No Confirmed Successful Exploits Yet
#SSI #PHP #FailleCritique
Vous le savez sans doute déjà, de nombreux sites publics et privés étaient en maintenance hier, suite à la faille #PHP2Shell, en fait 2 principales failles : CVE-2026-109618 et CVE-2026-109619 (toutes deux avec un score CVSS de 9,2 sur 10, critiques) :
https://cert.cyber.gouv.fr/alerte/CERTFR-2026-ALE-014
A vos mises à jour, prêt ? Upgradez !
Another good post about PHP PHP2Shell from @MiggoSecurity. This #PHP #PHP2Shell FAQ details who is vulnerable, what CVE-2026-109618 & CVE-2026-109619 mean & what to do now. Details if WAF rules are enough while you patch as attackers get around WAF rules. https://api.cyfluencer.com/s/php2shell-faq-cve-2026-109618-cve-2026-109619-30111/
Palo Alto confirms PAN-OS PHP2Shell flaws CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 affect the firewall management interface. Restrict access and patch.
#PaloAltoNetworks #PANOS #PHP2Shell #CVE2026109618 #CVE2026109619 #Firewall #Panorama #CyberSecurity
Rad Web Hosting Completes Critical Security Updates Across All Managed cPanel Servers
October 23, 2026 — Rad Web Hosting is pleased to announce the successful deployment of critical security patches addressing CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 across its entire fleet of managed cPanel & WHM servers.
Following the disclosure of two critical vulnerabilities affecting the PHP scripting engine on October 21, 2026, Rad Web Hosting prioritized the ...
Continued 👉 https://blog.radwebhosting.com/rad-web-hosting-completes-critical-security-updates-across-all-managed-cpanel-servers/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon.social
PHP2Shell: guía completa de verificación, mitigación y respuesta (CVE-2026-109618 y CVE-2026-109619)
Vía: @seguinfo
https://blog.segu-info.com.ar/2026/10/php2shell-guia-completa-de-verificacion.html
🚨 URGENT SECURITY ADVISORY: Critical "PHP2Shell" Updates Required 🚨
Two critical RCE vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-109618 & CVE-2026-109619) are actively exploited in the wild.
Dedicated server clients: Update OS packages to the latest PHP releases (8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, 8.2.35) via SSH immediately.
Crucially, restart your web server and PHP-FPM services after patching to load the secure binaries. Need help? Open a high-priority ticket.
This Week in Security: Record Patch Tuesday, PHP’s Bad Time, The Oldest Vuln, AI Armies, and More
It’s no longer a proper month without Microsoft breaking its own record for security fixes, and October’s Patch Tuesday was no exception. Brian Krebs brings the roundup: more than 1,400 vulnerabilities fixed in a single batch, dwarfing September’s record of nearly 1,000, which itself was about ten times the normal monthly load. According to Tenable, Microsoft has now passed 4,000 CVEs for the year with two months still to go.
Only one of the fixes is for a vulnerability already being exploited in the wild: CVE-2026-96951, a security feature bypass in the Windows Shell affecting Windows 10, 11, and some Server versions. A .NET Framework bypass, CVE-2026-108398, was publicly disclosed before the patch, giving attackers a head start, and with modern AI tooling, it seems like not much of a head start is needed. At least 78 of the bugs are rated critical, and most of those allow remote code execution with little or no user interaction. Windows 10 holdouts can relax a little: Microsoft quietly extended free updates through October 2027. Given the pace of exploitation, this is probably the only way to prevent an Internet-scale meltdown.
Microsoft credits LLM-driven bug hunting for the volume, which leaves the poor admins who have to test and deploy all of this in an unenviable spot. Fortra’s analysis shows that only 26 Microsoft vulnerabilities have landed in the CISA KEV catalog of actively exploited bugs so far this year, so start there. For the rest, the SANS Internet Storm Center and Cisco Talos have the usual breakdowns by severity. Or, you know, just patch everything and hope for the best, which is roughly what everyone does anyhow.
The CA private key is… 4
Originally I was calling this the “big one” for the week, but this week that just keeps on giving. The private keys for eight eMudhra intermediate certificates have been compromised, and the way they were compromised is going to be a security talk punchline for years. Remember the Debian SSL and SSH key debacle? Of that scale.
Some background first. When your browser connects to a website over HTTPS, the site presents a certificate saying “I am example.com”, signed by a Certificate Authority (CA). Your browser and OS ship with a list of trusted root CAs, but roots are too valuable to use day to day, so they sign intermediate certificates, and the intermediates sign the actual website certificates. Whoever holds an intermediate’s private key can mint a certificate for any website, and every client that trusts the root will believe it. The whole system depends on those keys staying secret, and on them being generated properly in the first place.
eMudhra, an Indian CA which sells certificates under the emSign brand, had six TLS intermediates and two code-signing intermediates chaining to the emSign ECC Root CA – G3, which is trusted by Chrome and Apple, and Mozilla. A researcher identified only as Wayne proved the keys were compromised by signing the message “We have a problem here – Wayne” with each of them and sending it to the root programs.
How did Wayne get the keys? Flüpke posted one on Mastodon, and the secret value for the “EM OV TLS CA – G3C” key is… 4. Not four followed by 380 bits of randomness: the integer four. A reply quickly brute-forced the rest, and they’re all equally tiny: 56, 230, 237, 115, 155, 156, and 66. The keys were “incorrectly generated by the CA”, and anyone could recover them from the public certificates, which has been true since they were created in April 2025.
The browsers moved fast. According to The Hacker News, Chrome pushed a block within two hours of the report, and Mozilla blocked the certificates in under three, pulled the root from NSS, and shipped Firefox updates (CVE-2026-113470) for anyone with automatic updates disabled. There are no Certificate Transparency logs of rogue certificates, so modern browsers were never at risk. Everything that isn’t a browser is going to be the real problem and the extremely long tail of this fault: plenty of software never checks for revoked certificates and keeps trusting these keys until its bundled root list is updated.
Go hard-coded the eight bad keys into its standard library (CVE-2026-111943), but as Penligent points out, that only protects Go programs once they’re rebuilt with the new release. Python, Rust, Java, Node.js, curl, and most Linux distributions have updated root bundles, and the we-have-a-problem.com site has a full list, a checker, and manual workarounds for macOS, whose built-in curl and git don’t check revocation. There are also fixes for Linux, Windows, and the BSDs. Update everything, then go rebuild everything you compiled yourself. And then wonder how you’re going to update appliances, IoT devices, cameras, and everything else that fetches code over HTTPS or SSL.
php2shell: PHP gets owned by running out of memory
PHP, the language behind a significant percentage of the web had a rough week. WordPress, Drupal, Magento, phpMyAdmin, and just about every hosting control panel, major ecommerce sites, home project blogs, and even Hackaday itself was potentially impacted. Details of two critical vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, leaked onto Hacker News a day ahead of the embargo, and Huntress covers the scramble that followed as PHP rushed its release out early. Now that patches are available, Ryan Austin of Calif has published the full writeup, demonstrating pre-authentication remote code execution against important apps on default configurations, in PHP versions back to 5.4.0. That’s over a decade of PHP.
The trick is an old one, first found by Stefan Esser back in 2004. PHP enforces a memory limit for each request, and when a request exceeds it, PHP stops immediately with a fatal error. If that happens in the middle of native code updating some internal structure, the structure is left half-built, and the cleanup code that runs afterward trusts it anyhow. That’s a classic “use-after-free” style bug, where the program uses memory that’s already been released or was never properly set up, and those are frequently exploitable. Calif found ways to reliably push a request over the memory limit at exactly the right moment (deeply nested empty file uploads turn out to balloon into hundreds of megabytes of internal tables, while staying under PHP’s upload size limits), and three different places where the interruption leaves a dangerous mess. Austin found the first bug with a generally available LLM, but only because he knew PHP’s twenty-year history of memory-limit bugs well enough to point it in the right direction.
Amazon reports that its honeypots caught a php2shell exploitation attempt on October 17th, four days before the embargo lifted, and that it’s now being broadly exploited. Their advice is worth repeating: for critical bugs on internet-facing systems, measure your patch window in hours, not weeks, and start investigating from the earliest exploitation date, not the disclosure date. If you can’t patch right now, Calif suggests disabling session.upload_progress and removing the memory limit, which comes with its own obvious problems.
One word of caution: alongside the legitimate writeups, there are many self-published “corrected findings” and “proof-of-concept” posts that can’t seem to decide whether their own exploit works, while offering a downloadable “weaponized” bundle. A leaked-bug panic is the perfect time to hand anxious admins a zip file. Read the real advisories, and don’t run random proof-of-concept bundles.
A Sixteen-year-old forever-day in Broadcom WiFi
Quentin Kaiser has the long-form writeup of his Hexacon talk on a bug in Broadcom’s WiFi stack, present since at least 2010, which gives an attacker a root shell on a router from across the street. So called “parking lot” attacks that can happen from someone not even on your property have long been the boogeymen of WiFi security, and it’s been a little bit since we’ve gotten a new one.
The bug lives in WPS, WiFi Protected Setup: the “push the button on your router and then on your printer” pairing system that was supposed to save people from typing long WiFi passwords. WPS has a long and spotty security history, and this bug can be triggered over the air without knowing the network password, and without completing a WPS pairing. Kaiser’s demos show him pulling the WiFi password straight out of a router’s settings and sending it back over WiFi, and getting a fully interactive remote shell carried entirely over WiFi frames. No Internet connection required.
The really grim part is the patch history. Broadcom quietly released an incomplete fix in 2018, then suggested vendors switch to the open-source hostapd instead. For the older eCos-based chipsets that’s effectively never going to happen, which makes it a permanent “forever-day”. Broadcom refused to assign a CVE, and because Broadcom is its own CVE authority, CERT/CC closed Kaiser’s case the same day it was opened.
As of disclosure, the cable and DSL gateways he tested from three of Belgium’s four major ISPs were still vulnerable, and his napkin math puts it at over a million and a half devices in Belgium alone. Broadcom chips are, of course, sold everywhere. If you’re running ISP-provided hardware, there isn’t much you can do about the firmware. Turning off WPS can’t hurt if your router allows it, although Kaiser doesn’t say whether that blocks the attack. Disabling the gateway’s own WiFi and running your own access point that you can actually update is the safer bet.
GitLab regex bug reaches back twelve years
GitLab has released fixes for CVE-2026-110264, a maximum-severity CVSS 10.0 bug allowing unauthenticated attackers to run code on self-hosted GitLab servers. The flaw is an integer overflow when compiling a specially crafted regular expression in Onigmo, the Ruby regex engine which GitLab bundles into its own packages, so it affects every version back to GitLab 7.0 in 2014.
This is the fourth regex engine code execution bug from the same researcher in about a month (after CVE-2026-97229, CVE-2026-93577, and CVE-2026-89078), and comes with a nasty gotcha: the new fixed versions are one release past the October 12th fix, so if you diligently patched nine days ago, you’re vulnerable again. GitLab hasn’t said what’s needed to trigger the bug, so there’s no configuration workaround. If you’re running GitLab at home or in the shop, patch, and budget for some downtime while the database migrations run.
Node.js Brotli bug
Node.js shipped security updates for the 22, 24, and 26 branches, headlined by CVE-2026-111497, an out-of-bounds write in the bundled Brotli decompression library. Vercel’s advisory notes that researchers have demonstrated both memory leaks and command execution.
Node doesn’t decompress Brotli data on its own, but plenty of applications and libraries do, whether on incoming requests or on responses fetched from other servers. Vercel deployed firewall rules for traffic coming into its own platform, but no firewall can protect your code from a malicious response it goes and fetches itself. Node 20 is end-of-life and won’t be fixed. As a bonus, the same releases carry the eMudhra certificate distrust, so that’s two reasons to go update.
Header accordions and HTTP/3
HTTP/3 is the newest version of the protocol behind the web, running over QUIC (a UDP-based transport) instead of TCP. To save bandwidth, it compresses request headers using a scheme called QPACK: common headers can be sent as a one-byte reference into a table instead of the full text. Compression is great for bandwidth, but any time a small input can turn into a big output, there’s a risk of a “decompression bomb”. Similar tricks resulted in “zip bombs” in the 2000s, and what’s old is new again.
FoxIO found exactly that in seven of the ten HTTP/3 implementations they tested. One approach packs about 160,000 unique short headers into a single 1MB request; another stores one 4KB header and then references it thousands of times, a 4000-to-1 amplification. The HTTP/3 spec already says how to limit the decoded size, but implementations got it wrong in every possible way: checking only the compressed size, decompressing everything before checking, ignoring the per-header overhead, or reading the limit setting and then never enforcing it.
Fixed so far are quic-go (CVE-2025-64702), which is used by Caddy, Traefik, and Cloudflare’s tunnels; Cloudflare’s quiche (CVE-2026-12523); lsquic 4.9.0; and even Wireshark (CVE-2025-13945), whose QPACK decoder crashed during testing. Bun, the hyperium h3 Rust crate, and aioquic/mitmproxy remain unpatched. Bun gets special mention for an integer overflow that turns a single 516KB request into a permanent 100% CPU infinite loop. The lesson applies to any compression format: limit the decompressed size as you go, not just the bytes on the wire.
Metamorphic macOS ransomware
Patrick Wardle of Objective-See digs into Heartbreaker, macOS ransomware written in Rust that has sat on VirusTotal since May 2025, undetected by every antivirus engine.
Most antivirus detection relies on signatures: a hash or byte pattern identifying a known-bad file. Metamorphic malware tries to dodge signatures by rewriting itself so every copy looks different while behaving the same. Heartbreaker takes a delightfully brute-force approach: it carries its own Rust source code inside the binary, and after running, it shuffles variable names, adds junk functions, installs a Rust compiler if one isn’t present, recompiles itself, and replaces itself with the new build. It is about as subtle as a brick through a window.
As ransomware it’s not very scary. It only encrypts the Downloads folder, and uses the same hard-coded key for every victim, so Wardle simply wrote a decryptor. The rebuilding also depends on a GitHub library which has since disappeared, so it mostly fails anyhow. Wardle uses it to demonstrate his free RansomWhere? tool, which ignores signatures completely and instead watches for an untrusted process rapidly writing files that look encrypted (using a bit of entropy math). The malware can change its hash all day long, but to ransom anything it still has to encrypt the files, and that’s much harder to disguise.
UpdraftPlus vendor breached
TeamUpdraft, the company behind the very popular UpdraftPlus WordPress backup plugin, disclosed a breach of their customer database over the weekend. Names, emails, addresses, hashed passwords, and two-factor authentication settings were taken, and more worryingly, the connection keys for UpdraftCentral, their cloud dashboard for managing many WordPress sites at once. UpdraftPlus previously made an appearance back in June, when a vulnerability in the plugin was used in the Awesome Motive supply chain attack.
Those UpdraftCentral keys can send commands to every connected site, which turns one vendor breach into a remote control for potentially thousands of customer websites. TeamUpdraft has released UpdraftPlus 1.26.12 and 2.26.12, which automatically disconnect the old keys. If you or anyone you know manages WordPress sites through UpdraftCentral, log in to each site directly, update the plugin, and check for unexpected admin accounts and plugins (including the easy-to-miss “Must-Use” plugins tab).
Spyware delivered by ad network
Citizen Lab has published research showing that the Israeli ad-tech company Discover-Tech helped deliver spyware through ordinary online ads, targeting at least 45 devices at the news outlet Al Jazeera in 2024 and 2025. Citizen Lab attributes the spyware to Candiru, a commercial spyware vendor.
When you load a web page with ads, the ad slot is typically auctioned off in real time to the highest bidder, based on a profile of who you seem to be. This “programmatic advertising” system is, by design, a mechanism for running third-party content on a very specific person’s device. It’s easy to see why that’s attractive to a spyware vendor. According to Citizen Lab, Discover-Tech’s platform could profile users and infect a device just by displaying an ad, no click required. CPJ reports that the company’s ads reached nearly 200,000 websites and apps, and researchers at Confiant found them on government networks including the US Department of Defense, NATO, and the UN.
Malicious ads are nothing new, but this is the first public evidence of an ad platform being used for targeted, zero-click spyware delivery. “Don’t click on ads” has always been good advice. An ad blocker isn’t just a quality-of-life improvement; it’s attack surface reduction.
Ransomware negotiators on the wrong side
Last week we covered a ransomware “recovery” CEO charged with secretly paying ransoms while billing customers for decryption. This week, Brian Krebs reports that investigators chasing ShinyHunters (the group behind the FBI hack) have identified executives at two ransomware negotiation firms with unusually friendly relationships with the gang. Chats seized when Dutch police arrested a suspected ShinyHunters member reportedly show negotiators who knew about new victims before the victims themselves did. One Canadian executive has already been arrested, and investigators believe an executive at an unnamed, prestigious US consulting firm helped run the gang’s extortion website.
It’s not the first time: the DOJ sentenced Florida negotiator Angelo Martino to 70 months in July for feeding his own clients’ negotiating positions to the BlackCat ransomware gang, and for helping deploy ransomware against even more victims. The government seized $10 million in assets from him, including a luxury fishing boat and, for reasons unknown, a food truck.
Part of the problem is structural. Some negotiation firms charge a percentage of the ransom paid, which gives the “negotiator” every incentive to pay, and pay big. Firms which refuse to facilitate payments often just get swapped out by the insurance company for ones that will. Meanwhile, ShinyHunters is reportedly furious with Coveware, an incident response firm, for telling victims not to pay, which is probably the best endorsement Coveware could ask for.
An army of AI agents
The Verge reports that security firm Norforge found an attacker using a swarm of mostly autonomous AI agents to break into more than 100 websites, including sites belonging to John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. The agents ran on Cairn, an open-source “general-purpose problem-solving engine”: you give it a starting point and a goal, and the agents work toward it while documenting their progress. That documentation is how they were caught: the attacker’s Cairn instance was exposed to the Internet, along with about 20 others that appear malicious.
According to Reuters, the attacker described their preferred intrusion tactics in fewer than 100 Chinese characters, and each successful breach took about 23 hours. The victims say the impacted sites were standalone support pages, and Cairn’s author insists it was “never a ‘hacking tool'”. Many tools can be double-edged, but the effort balance here is hard to ignore: a short prompt and a day of waiting on one side, and defenders who have to close every hole on the other.
Staples hacked to fund a gift cards
404 Media pieced together, from an unsealed search warrant, that a Chinese organized crime ring hacked Staples in 2023 and issued more than 15,000 gift cards worth over $5 million. Staples’ internal customer support system was supposed to be reachable only from inside the company, but wasn’t. The attackers requested “heap dumps”, a debugging feature which captures everything an application has in memory, and pulled out the active login sessions of customer service reps. With those, they simply logged in as the reps and issued gift cards. A similar trick was used in a hack of payment data from Target years ago, where attackers leveraged access through the air conditioner control network into the cash register network, and then dumped credit cards directly from RAM as they were processed.
If you’ve ever wondered why debugging endpoints left exposed in production show up in every penetration test report, this is why. The gift cards were then laundered the old-fashioned way: crews of shoppers hitting Target stores with phones full of gift cards, buying Apple and Bose gear by the cartload (about $141,000 across 85 Target stores in 18 states in two days), with the goods shipped back to China. The larger ring this fed into reportedly moved over $100 million in gift cards.
PingCAP breach claims
An extortion group calling itself FulcrumSec has posted a leak site claiming a massive breach of PingCAP, makers of the TiDB Cloud managed database service. The group claims it found cloud credentials committed to PingCAP’s own source code repositories, and used them to set up a replication feed of PingCAP’s production control database that re-exported everything to the attackers every six hours for 22 days, without being noticed.
The claims haven’t been independently verified, but they’re very specific: 10.6TB of data, 115,000 customer API keys stored in plaintext, 20 million customer SQL queries, four years of connection logs with customer IP addresses, and 413 private source repositories. The attackers quote a 2022 internal security ticket noting that any member of a customer organization, even a billing-only account, could reset the root password on every database in that organization. Perhaps most damaging, support engineers allegedly pasted live customer credentials into support tickets, including cloud keys with admin access to other companies’ storage. If you’re a TiDB Cloud customer, assume your API keys, connection strings, and anything ever pasted into a support ticket are burned, and rotate accordingly.
Fake WhatsApp on the Play Store
Android Authority found a fake WhatsApp app on Google Play with over half a million downloads, a week after a fake Chrome app racked up over 100,000. The fake copied the real listing’s screenshots and description word for word, and in some cases appeared as a sponsored result when searching for the real app.
The trick that let it linger is Google Play’s “Early Access” program, which disables public reviews. Normally a fake app gets buried in one-star “THIS IS A SCAM” reviews; in Early Access, nobody can see them. As of publication it was still available. “Only install from the official store” is still good advice for family members, but it’s a little less reassuring when the official store is selling ad placement to the fake.
Meta Muse leaks via DNS
Back in September, we covered a serious vulnerability in Muse, Meta’s extremely privileged AI agent. This week, Meta suspended Muse’s chat sharing feature after researchers at Claroc found they could find and read thousands of shared conversations.
Each shared chat got its own web address, with the conversation title as part of the hostname. Hostnames get looked up in DNS, and many DNS lookups are recorded by “passive DNS” services, essentially a giant searchable history of which names have been resolved. One search returned a ready-made table of contents of shared chats. Claroc found 6,800 of them, including a small business loan application, a bank fraud alert with partial account details, and internal company documents. “Secret URL” sharing only works if the URL stays secret, and putting the secret in a DNS hostname is roughly the opposite of that.
Password1 strikes again
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office reprimanded IT provider Ogi Networks and the Welsh public sector data organization Data Cymru over a 2024 ransomware attack which exposed data on 3,300 people, most of them children. The way in? A test account named “Test2”, created in 2012, never reviewed, and protected with the password “Password1”. The local administrator accounts on three systems also shared a single password for the same twelve years.
There’s nothing exotic here, sadly. Old accounts nobody remembers, passwords that would fall to the first guess of any automated tool, and an outsourcing arrangement where each side assumed the other was handling security. None of it makes for exciting headlines, but these are the things that keep causing very real breaches.
Trezor wallets also implanted
As a follow-up to last week’s coverage of hardware implants in Ledger crypto wallets, Kim Zetter reports that Trezor’s claim of “not a single piece of evidence” that its devices were compromised doesn’t quite line up with reality. Joe Grand found implants in two Trezor wallets, bought through Facebook Marketplace and a TikTok shop, and reported them to Trezor in August.
The Trezor attack is different from the Ledger implant. Instead of adding a radio to spy on the screen, the attackers replaced the main microcontroller with one running modified (open source) firmware. The firmware “randomly” generates one of a dozen recovery phrases the attackers already know. To pass Trezor’s integrity checks, it presents a copy of the legitimate firmware for verification before switching to the malicious code. The takeaway hasn’t changed from last week: buy only directly from the vendor, and if you’re holding enough crypto to make this worth someone’s while, consider whether you can really trust any single device.
NGINX gets more critical bugs
F5 has released out-of-band (meaning outside their normal patch schedule) updates for three critical vulnerabilities in NGINX, the web server and reverse proxy that sits in front of a huge chunk of the Internet, and quite possibly in front of the services on your home lab. The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore has a summary: all three are rated CVSS 9.2, can be triggered remotely without authentication, and can crash worker processes or, under the right conditions, allow remote code execution.
The bugs are CVE-2026-15176, a heap overflow in the “alias” and “rewrite” directives; CVE-2026-97205, a use-after-free in asynchronous file I/O combined with Server Side Includes; and CVE-2026-93479, a heap overflow in the “map” directive. Code execution requires the vulnerable configuration to be in use, and requires bypassing ASLR (the randomization of memory layout which makes exploits harder to aim). Affected versions include NGINX Open Source 1.30.5 and below and 1.31.6 and below, NGINX Plus R33 through R37, and a long list of F5’s NGINX-based products, including the Kubernetes Ingress Controller.
Back in May we covered “nginx-poolslip”, where the suggested mitigation was to avoid unnamed regex capture groups in rewrite rules. The mitigation for the “map” bug this time? Use named captures instead of unnamed captures. If you’ve been putting off cleaning up those “$1” references in your config, now’s the time. For the other two, avoid “alias” inside “location” blocks (and the “$request_filename” variable), or disable AIO or SSI, until you can update.
Linux kernel bugs posted to the wrong list
Normally, security bugs in the Linux kernel are reported privately to the kernel security team, which coordinates a fix before details go public. This is “coordinated disclosure”: the bug and fix are published together, ideally giving admins a chance to patch before attackers can start writing exploits. The Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), on the other hand, is about as public as it gets.
Phoronix reports that Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, seemingly by accident, sent a batch of unpatched vulnerability reports straight to LKML. Greg Kroah-Hartman replied to each report asking about the choice of mailing list, which I can only imagine was done with remarkable restraint. The most serious two are both CVSS 9.0 remote code execution bugs in ksmbd, the kernel’s built-in SMB (Windows file sharing) server: an integer underflow in SMB Direct, and a race condition. The rest include local privilege escalation bugs in the networking code, the VMware graphics driver (an out-of-bounds write), and a stack overflow in search-domain TCP query handling, plus an information leak in the NVMe-over-fabrics target code.
Some of the bugs already have patches being tested or queued for future kernel releases, and those will presumably be expedited now. Most systems don’t run ksmbd (the userspace Samba server is far more common), but if you’ve enabled it on a NAS or a home server, it’s worth disabling until patched kernels land. As Phoronix puts it: “the bug and security reports keep on coming in the AI fueled world.”
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RE: chaos.social/users/fluepke/sta…
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Set `session.upload_progress.enabled=0` until the next PHP release to block an unlikely RCE vector (CVE-2026-115560).
We already recommended this for CVE-2026-109619 from Wednesday: keep it disabled.
Only applications with non-default `serialize_handler` switching it to `php` at runtime can be affected.
There is more information in the advisory on the PHP website by the PHP security team: https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-23-1
Set session.upload_progress.enabled=0 till next PHP release to block an unlikely RCE vector (CVE-2026-115560). Already recommended for CVE-2026-109619 on Wednesday, keep it disabled. Only apps with non-default serialize_handler switching it to "php" at runtime can be affected.
Information advisory on PHP website by the PHP security team: https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-23-1
Seit Bekanntwerden der zwei PHP-Schwachstellen CVE-2026-109618 und CVE-2026-109619 am 20. Oktober 2026 herrscht bei vielen Menschen Unsicherheit, ob digitale Angebote wie gewohnt nutzbar sind.
Wir freuen uns, dass wir Ihnen für mailbox grünes Licht geben können: Sie können mailbox weiterhin sicher und wie gewohnt nutzen.
Erfahren Sie, wie mailbox agiert hat: https://mailbox.org/de/news/php-sicherheitsluecke-mailbox-ist-sicher/
Since the two PHP vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, came to light on 20 October 2026, many people have been unsure whether digital services can be used as normal.
We are pleased to give you the all-clear regarding mailbox: you can continue to use mailbox safely and as normal.
Find out how mailbox has responded: https://mailbox.org/en/news/php-security-vulnerability-mailbox-is-secure/
Півчетвертої ночі закінчили термінові правки на нашому сервері. Причина в тому, що в світі знайшли дві критичні вразливості в самій мові PHP. Їх назвали PHP2Shell, це CVE-2026-109618 і CVE-2026-109619. Оцінка 9.2 з 10, а для експлуатації не потрібна авторизація.
Основна наша система написана іншою мовою, але кілька окремих сервісів працювали на PHP. Ми несемо відповідальність за все, що крутиться на нашому сервері, тому закрили всі.
Що відомо станом на зараз.
Виправлення вийшли 21 жовтня у версіях 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 та 8.2.35. Старші гілки офіційних патчів не отримали.
Знайшли діри дослідники з допомогою моделей ШІ: першу версію компанія Calif ще в серпні, а Wiz незалежно виявила обидві. Дослідники кажуть, що вада існувала роками, але ШІ зробив її експлуатацію практичною.
Інформація витекла за день до виходу патчу. Спроби атак фіксували ще 17 жовтня, за кілька днів до публічного розкриття. Деякі уряди, за повідомленнями, на час відключили свої сайти.
Масштаб. PHP стоїть на близько 70% сайтів, де відома серверна мова. Це не означає, що стільки зламано: надійних цифр підтверджених зломів поки немає, і дослідники пишуть, що експлуатація складніша, ніж здавалось у перший день. Але ризик реальний, а старих версій без підтримки в мережі дуже багато.
Що зробити вам.
Перевірте, чи є PHP на сервері та в контейнерах: php -v, docker images.
Оновіть PHP і перезапустіть php-fpm або веб-сервер.
Якщо оновитись не можете одразу, вимкніть session.upload_progress.enabled.
Подивіться на дивні дочірні процеси від користувача веб-сервера і нові php файли.
Якщо сервіси були відкриті в мережі з 17 жовтня, змініть ключі та токени.
Бережіть себе і свої сервери 🙏
#PHP #PHP2Shell #Security #InfoSec #CVE #Fediverse #Linux #DevOps #SelfHosting
To complicate things, major shared hosting providers have patched #PHP against #php2shell using a backport — without incrementing the version number displayed by phpinfo.
On the plus side – and it's a massive plus – this means that for many sites, versions as old as 5.2 are protected, even though the PHP Team only released official patches for 8.2 and newer.
On the minus side, if you run a website there's no obvious way to tell whether you're using the new or old version.
This explains why, across the various websites I manage, even really old versions of PHP have build dates of Wednesday afternoon a few hours after the official fixes. It seems almost too good to be true.
CloudLinux explained: "PHP.net fixed CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 in new PHP versions […] Our alt-php and ea-php packages carry the same fix applied to the PHP version they already shipped (a backport). These packages contain the fix for both CVEs, even though the PHP version number is lower."
Then today, CloudLinux released builds to bring the version numbers in line with the official ones.
Information from #cPanel and #CloudLinux here:
"We suggest you set session.upload_progress.enabled=0 until the next regular bugfix release, to fully protect from an unlikely RCE vector. This setting was already listed as a mitigation in the GHSA-6wmf-4rv5-p3rp advisory for CVE-2026-109619 published on Oct 21st, 2026. If you applied it then, keep it in place and no further action is needed.
The issue can only occur under an unusual combination of configuration and application code. An application must set session.serialize_handler to php_binary or php_serialize in its configuration and then switch it to php at runtime with ini_set() before calling session_start(). Session upload progress must also still be enabled. Applications that never change the serialize handler at runtime can keep the feature enabled. Since this setup is unlikely in practice, we are handling it in the regular release cycle and will publish a full advisory for CVE-2026-115560 with the next release."
Source: https://www.php.net/
Critical 9.2 RCE vulnerabilities CVE-2026-109618 & CVE-2026-109619 are live. Standard WordPress updates won't stop this file upload vector. Secure your systems now at klytron.com
#klytron #cybersecurity #infosec #vulnerability #klytron #technews
Patched my VPS with the patched #PHP from a few days ago.
Thankfully I only have 1 #WordPress site left from the half a dozen I had before. You can't hack my #Hugo static sites!
An interesting case is the repo by eness (https://github.com/eness/php2shell-CVE-2026-109618-CVE-2026-109619-PoC): First, it contained what appears to be a reimplementation of J4ck3LSyN's research.
Since then, that has been replaced with an (unattributed) copy of 9bie's exploit. The rest of the repo is mitigation information and not particularly interesting.
(3/n)
🚨 Palo Alto Networks warns PAN-OS is affected by PHP2Shell remote code execution flaws
CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 affect the PAN-OS management web interface, including the HTTPS interface and XML API service.
⠀
Affected products include:
• PAN-OS 10.2, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1 and 12.2 release trains
• All Panorama versions
• All WildFire WF-500 and WF-500-B appliances
⠀
No special configuration is required, but the risk is highest when the management interface is exposed to the internet.
Palo Alto Networks rates the product impact at CVSS 8.7. PAN-OS hotfixes are expected between October 26 and 30, while dates for Panorama and WildFire appliance fixes remain unconfirmed.
The company is not aware of malicious exploitation targeting its products.
GlobalProtect and Captive Portal are not affected.
Source:
https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2026-109618
Cloudflare observed millions of exploit attempts targeting PHP2Shell vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619) within hours of public disclosure.
The flaws enable unauthenticated remote code execution via specially crafted HTTP requests.
PHP released patches in versions 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, and 8.2.35.
While major security firms reported no confirmed compromises, Censys estimates over 34.4 million services…
PHP2Shell Exploit Attempts Hit Millions as Attackers Try to Deploy Mirai Malware
Threat actors have been observed attempting to exploit the newly disclosed PHP2Shell vulnerabilities to rope infected systems into a Mirai botnet variant called Potassium, The Hacker News reports. The attacks target CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, both rated CVSS 9.2, though weaponizing the flaws may be harder than previously thought. https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/php2shell-exploit-attempts-hit-millions.html
Hackers got a four-day head start on epic PHP2Shell vulnerability
Attackers began targeting the critical PHP2Shell vulnerabilities four days before patches were released, Amazon has disclosed, while exploit attempts seen by Cloudflare have since climbed into the millions. PHP’s maintainers shipped fixes for CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 after details leaked ahead of a coordinated release, Ars Technica reports. https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/10/hackers-got-a-four-day-head-start-on-epic-php2shell-vulnerability/
php2shell (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619) – PHP critical vulnerability fixes available | Ubuntu
https://ubuntu.com/blog/php2shell-vulnerability-fixes-available
PHP2Shell: Millions of Attacks, No Confirmed Successful Exploits Yet
#SSI #PHP #FailleCritique
Vous le savez sans doute déjà, de nombreux sites publics et privés étaient en maintenance hier, suite à la faille #PHP2Shell, en fait 2 principales failles : CVE-2026-109618 et CVE-2026-109619 (toutes deux avec un score CVSS de 9,2 sur 10, critiques) :
https://cert.cyber.gouv.fr/alerte/CERTFR-2026-ALE-014
A vos mises à jour, prêt ? Upgradez !
PHP warns of CVE-2026-115560, a PHP session vulnerability that follows PHP2Shell. Disable session.upload_progress until the next bugfix release.
#PHP #CVE2026115560 #PHP2Shell #CVE2026109619 #RCE #WebSecurity #PatchManagement #CyberSecurity
Another good post about PHP PHP2Shell from @MiggoSecurity. This #PHP #PHP2Shell FAQ details who is vulnerable, what CVE-2026-109618 & CVE-2026-109619 mean & what to do now. Details if WAF rules are enough while you patch as attackers get around WAF rules. https://api.cyfluencer.com/s/php2shell-faq-cve-2026-109618-cve-2026-109619-30111/
Palo Alto confirms PAN-OS PHP2Shell flaws CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 affect the firewall management interface. Restrict access and patch.
#PaloAltoNetworks #PANOS #PHP2Shell #CVE2026109618 #CVE2026109619 #Firewall #Panorama #CyberSecurity
Rad Web Hosting Completes Critical Security Updates Across All Managed cPanel Servers
October 23, 2026 — Rad Web Hosting is pleased to announce the successful deployment of critical security patches addressing CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 across its entire fleet of managed cPanel & WHM servers.
Following the disclosure of two critical vulnerabilities affecting the PHP scripting engine on October 21, 2026, Rad Web Hosting prioritized the ...
Continued 👉 https://blog.radwebhosting.com/rad-web-hosting-completes-critical-security-updates-across-all-managed-cpanel-servers/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon.social
PHP2Shell: guía completa de verificación, mitigación y respuesta (CVE-2026-109618 y CVE-2026-109619)
Vía: @seguinfo
https://blog.segu-info.com.ar/2026/10/php2shell-guia-completa-de-verificacion.html
🚨 URGENT SECURITY ADVISORY: Critical "PHP2Shell" Updates Required 🚨
Two critical RCE vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-109618 & CVE-2026-109619) are actively exploited in the wild.
Dedicated server clients: Update OS packages to the latest PHP releases (8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, 8.2.35) via SSH immediately.
Crucially, restart your web server and PHP-FPM services after patching to load the secure binaries. Need help? Open a high-priority ticket.
This Week in Security: Record Patch Tuesday, PHP’s Bad Time, The Oldest Vuln, AI Armies, and More
It’s no longer a proper month without Microsoft breaking its own record for security fixes, and October’s Patch Tuesday was no exception. Brian Krebs brings the roundup: more than 1,400 vulnerabilities fixed in a single batch, dwarfing September’s record of nearly 1,000, which itself was about ten times the normal monthly load. According to Tenable, Microsoft has now passed 4,000 CVEs for the year with two months still to go.
Only one of the fixes is for a vulnerability already being exploited in the wild: CVE-2026-96951, a security feature bypass in the Windows Shell affecting Windows 10, 11, and some Server versions. A .NET Framework bypass, CVE-2026-108398, was publicly disclosed before the patch, giving attackers a head start, and with modern AI tooling, it seems like not much of a head start is needed. At least 78 of the bugs are rated critical, and most of those allow remote code execution with little or no user interaction. Windows 10 holdouts can relax a little: Microsoft quietly extended free updates through October 2027. Given the pace of exploitation, this is probably the only way to prevent an Internet-scale meltdown.
Microsoft credits LLM-driven bug hunting for the volume, which leaves the poor admins who have to test and deploy all of this in an unenviable spot. Fortra’s analysis shows that only 26 Microsoft vulnerabilities have landed in the CISA KEV catalog of actively exploited bugs so far this year, so start there. For the rest, the SANS Internet Storm Center and Cisco Talos have the usual breakdowns by severity. Or, you know, just patch everything and hope for the best, which is roughly what everyone does anyhow.
The CA private key is… 4
Originally I was calling this the “big one” for the week, but this week that just keeps on giving. The private keys for eight eMudhra intermediate certificates have been compromised, and the way they were compromised is going to be a security talk punchline for years. Remember the Debian SSL and SSH key debacle? Of that scale.
Some background first. When your browser connects to a website over HTTPS, the site presents a certificate saying “I am example.com”, signed by a Certificate Authority (CA). Your browser and OS ship with a list of trusted root CAs, but roots are too valuable to use day to day, so they sign intermediate certificates, and the intermediates sign the actual website certificates. Whoever holds an intermediate’s private key can mint a certificate for any website, and every client that trusts the root will believe it. The whole system depends on those keys staying secret, and on them being generated properly in the first place.
eMudhra, an Indian CA which sells certificates under the emSign brand, had six TLS intermediates and two code-signing intermediates chaining to the emSign ECC Root CA – G3, which is trusted by Chrome and Apple, and Mozilla. A researcher identified only as Wayne proved the keys were compromised by signing the message “We have a problem here – Wayne” with each of them and sending it to the root programs.
How did Wayne get the keys? Flüpke posted one on Mastodon, and the secret value for the “EM OV TLS CA – G3C” key is… 4. Not four followed by 380 bits of randomness: the integer four. A reply quickly brute-forced the rest, and they’re all equally tiny: 56, 230, 237, 115, 155, 156, and 66. The keys were “incorrectly generated by the CA”, and anyone could recover them from the public certificates, which has been true since they were created in April 2025.
The browsers moved fast. According to The Hacker News, Chrome pushed a block within two hours of the report, and Mozilla blocked the certificates in under three, pulled the root from NSS, and shipped Firefox updates (CVE-2026-113470) for anyone with automatic updates disabled. There are no Certificate Transparency logs of rogue certificates, so modern browsers were never at risk. Everything that isn’t a browser is going to be the real problem and the extremely long tail of this fault: plenty of software never checks for revoked certificates and keeps trusting these keys until its bundled root list is updated.
Go hard-coded the eight bad keys into its standard library (CVE-2026-111943), but as Penligent points out, that only protects Go programs once they’re rebuilt with the new release. Python, Rust, Java, Node.js, curl, and most Linux distributions have updated root bundles, and the we-have-a-problem.com site has a full list, a checker, and manual workarounds for macOS, whose built-in curl and git don’t check revocation. There are also fixes for Linux, Windows, and the BSDs. Update everything, then go rebuild everything you compiled yourself. And then wonder how you’re going to update appliances, IoT devices, cameras, and everything else that fetches code over HTTPS or SSL.
php2shell: PHP gets owned by running out of memory
PHP, the language behind a significant percentage of the web had a rough week. WordPress, Drupal, Magento, phpMyAdmin, and just about every hosting control panel, major ecommerce sites, home project blogs, and even Hackaday itself was potentially impacted. Details of two critical vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, leaked onto Hacker News a day ahead of the embargo, and Huntress covers the scramble that followed as PHP rushed its release out early. Now that patches are available, Ryan Austin of Calif has published the full writeup, demonstrating pre-authentication remote code execution against important apps on default configurations, in PHP versions back to 5.4.0. That’s over a decade of PHP.
The trick is an old one, first found by Stefan Esser back in 2004. PHP enforces a memory limit for each request, and when a request exceeds it, PHP stops immediately with a fatal error. If that happens in the middle of native code updating some internal structure, the structure is left half-built, and the cleanup code that runs afterward trusts it anyhow. That’s a classic “use-after-free” style bug, where the program uses memory that’s already been released or was never properly set up, and those are frequently exploitable. Calif found ways to reliably push a request over the memory limit at exactly the right moment (deeply nested empty file uploads turn out to balloon into hundreds of megabytes of internal tables, while staying under PHP’s upload size limits), and three different places where the interruption leaves a dangerous mess. Austin found the first bug with a generally available LLM, but only because he knew PHP’s twenty-year history of memory-limit bugs well enough to point it in the right direction.
Amazon reports that its honeypots caught a php2shell exploitation attempt on October 17th, four days before the embargo lifted, and that it’s now being broadly exploited. Their advice is worth repeating: for critical bugs on internet-facing systems, measure your patch window in hours, not weeks, and start investigating from the earliest exploitation date, not the disclosure date. If you can’t patch right now, Calif suggests disabling session.upload_progress and removing the memory limit, which comes with its own obvious problems.
One word of caution: alongside the legitimate writeups, there are many self-published “corrected findings” and “proof-of-concept” posts that can’t seem to decide whether their own exploit works, while offering a downloadable “weaponized” bundle. A leaked-bug panic is the perfect time to hand anxious admins a zip file. Read the real advisories, and don’t run random proof-of-concept bundles.
A Sixteen-year-old forever-day in Broadcom WiFi
Quentin Kaiser has the long-form writeup of his Hexacon talk on a bug in Broadcom’s WiFi stack, present since at least 2010, which gives an attacker a root shell on a router from across the street. So called “parking lot” attacks that can happen from someone not even on your property have long been the boogeymen of WiFi security, and it’s been a little bit since we’ve gotten a new one.
The bug lives in WPS, WiFi Protected Setup: the “push the button on your router and then on your printer” pairing system that was supposed to save people from typing long WiFi passwords. WPS has a long and spotty security history, and this bug can be triggered over the air without knowing the network password, and without completing a WPS pairing. Kaiser’s demos show him pulling the WiFi password straight out of a router’s settings and sending it back over WiFi, and getting a fully interactive remote shell carried entirely over WiFi frames. No Internet connection required.
The really grim part is the patch history. Broadcom quietly released an incomplete fix in 2018, then suggested vendors switch to the open-source hostapd instead. For the older eCos-based chipsets that’s effectively never going to happen, which makes it a permanent “forever-day”. Broadcom refused to assign a CVE, and because Broadcom is its own CVE authority, CERT/CC closed Kaiser’s case the same day it was opened.
As of disclosure, the cable and DSL gateways he tested from three of Belgium’s four major ISPs were still vulnerable, and his napkin math puts it at over a million and a half devices in Belgium alone. Broadcom chips are, of course, sold everywhere. If you’re running ISP-provided hardware, there isn’t much you can do about the firmware. Turning off WPS can’t hurt if your router allows it, although Kaiser doesn’t say whether that blocks the attack. Disabling the gateway’s own WiFi and running your own access point that you can actually update is the safer bet.
GitLab regex bug reaches back twelve years
GitLab has released fixes for CVE-2026-110264, a maximum-severity CVSS 10.0 bug allowing unauthenticated attackers to run code on self-hosted GitLab servers. The flaw is an integer overflow when compiling a specially crafted regular expression in Onigmo, the Ruby regex engine which GitLab bundles into its own packages, so it affects every version back to GitLab 7.0 in 2014.
This is the fourth regex engine code execution bug from the same researcher in about a month (after CVE-2026-97229, CVE-2026-93577, and CVE-2026-89078), and comes with a nasty gotcha: the new fixed versions are one release past the October 12th fix, so if you diligently patched nine days ago, you’re vulnerable again. GitLab hasn’t said what’s needed to trigger the bug, so there’s no configuration workaround. If you’re running GitLab at home or in the shop, patch, and budget for some downtime while the database migrations run.
Node.js Brotli bug
Node.js shipped security updates for the 22, 24, and 26 branches, headlined by CVE-2026-111497, an out-of-bounds write in the bundled Brotli decompression library. Vercel’s advisory notes that researchers have demonstrated both memory leaks and command execution.
Node doesn’t decompress Brotli data on its own, but plenty of applications and libraries do, whether on incoming requests or on responses fetched from other servers. Vercel deployed firewall rules for traffic coming into its own platform, but no firewall can protect your code from a malicious response it goes and fetches itself. Node 20 is end-of-life and won’t be fixed. As a bonus, the same releases carry the eMudhra certificate distrust, so that’s two reasons to go update.
Header accordions and HTTP/3
HTTP/3 is the newest version of the protocol behind the web, running over QUIC (a UDP-based transport) instead of TCP. To save bandwidth, it compresses request headers using a scheme called QPACK: common headers can be sent as a one-byte reference into a table instead of the full text. Compression is great for bandwidth, but any time a small input can turn into a big output, there’s a risk of a “decompression bomb”. Similar tricks resulted in “zip bombs” in the 2000s, and what’s old is new again.
FoxIO found exactly that in seven of the ten HTTP/3 implementations they tested. One approach packs about 160,000 unique short headers into a single 1MB request; another stores one 4KB header and then references it thousands of times, a 4000-to-1 amplification. The HTTP/3 spec already says how to limit the decoded size, but implementations got it wrong in every possible way: checking only the compressed size, decompressing everything before checking, ignoring the per-header overhead, or reading the limit setting and then never enforcing it.
Fixed so far are quic-go (CVE-2025-64702), which is used by Caddy, Traefik, and Cloudflare’s tunnels; Cloudflare’s quiche (CVE-2026-12523); lsquic 4.9.0; and even Wireshark (CVE-2025-13945), whose QPACK decoder crashed during testing. Bun, the hyperium h3 Rust crate, and aioquic/mitmproxy remain unpatched. Bun gets special mention for an integer overflow that turns a single 516KB request into a permanent 100% CPU infinite loop. The lesson applies to any compression format: limit the decompressed size as you go, not just the bytes on the wire.
Metamorphic macOS ransomware
Patrick Wardle of Objective-See digs into Heartbreaker, macOS ransomware written in Rust that has sat on VirusTotal since May 2025, undetected by every antivirus engine.
Most antivirus detection relies on signatures: a hash or byte pattern identifying a known-bad file. Metamorphic malware tries to dodge signatures by rewriting itself so every copy looks different while behaving the same. Heartbreaker takes a delightfully brute-force approach: it carries its own Rust source code inside the binary, and after running, it shuffles variable names, adds junk functions, installs a Rust compiler if one isn’t present, recompiles itself, and replaces itself with the new build. It is about as subtle as a brick through a window.
As ransomware it’s not very scary. It only encrypts the Downloads folder, and uses the same hard-coded key for every victim, so Wardle simply wrote a decryptor. The rebuilding also depends on a GitHub library which has since disappeared, so it mostly fails anyhow. Wardle uses it to demonstrate his free RansomWhere? tool, which ignores signatures completely and instead watches for an untrusted process rapidly writing files that look encrypted (using a bit of entropy math). The malware can change its hash all day long, but to ransom anything it still has to encrypt the files, and that’s much harder to disguise.
UpdraftPlus vendor breached
TeamUpdraft, the company behind the very popular UpdraftPlus WordPress backup plugin, disclosed a breach of their customer database over the weekend. Names, emails, addresses, hashed passwords, and two-factor authentication settings were taken, and more worryingly, the connection keys for UpdraftCentral, their cloud dashboard for managing many WordPress sites at once. UpdraftPlus previously made an appearance back in June, when a vulnerability in the plugin was used in the Awesome Motive supply chain attack.
Those UpdraftCentral keys can send commands to every connected site, which turns one vendor breach into a remote control for potentially thousands of customer websites. TeamUpdraft has released UpdraftPlus 1.26.12 and 2.26.12, which automatically disconnect the old keys. If you or anyone you know manages WordPress sites through UpdraftCentral, log in to each site directly, update the plugin, and check for unexpected admin accounts and plugins (including the easy-to-miss “Must-Use” plugins tab).
Spyware delivered by ad network
Citizen Lab has published research showing that the Israeli ad-tech company Discover-Tech helped deliver spyware through ordinary online ads, targeting at least 45 devices at the news outlet Al Jazeera in 2024 and 2025. Citizen Lab attributes the spyware to Candiru, a commercial spyware vendor.
When you load a web page with ads, the ad slot is typically auctioned off in real time to the highest bidder, based on a profile of who you seem to be. This “programmatic advertising” system is, by design, a mechanism for running third-party content on a very specific person’s device. It’s easy to see why that’s attractive to a spyware vendor. According to Citizen Lab, Discover-Tech’s platform could profile users and infect a device just by displaying an ad, no click required. CPJ reports that the company’s ads reached nearly 200,000 websites and apps, and researchers at Confiant found them on government networks including the US Department of Defense, NATO, and the UN.
Malicious ads are nothing new, but this is the first public evidence of an ad platform being used for targeted, zero-click spyware delivery. “Don’t click on ads” has always been good advice. An ad blocker isn’t just a quality-of-life improvement; it’s attack surface reduction.
Ransomware negotiators on the wrong side
Last week we covered a ransomware “recovery” CEO charged with secretly paying ransoms while billing customers for decryption. This week, Brian Krebs reports that investigators chasing ShinyHunters (the group behind the FBI hack) have identified executives at two ransomware negotiation firms with unusually friendly relationships with the gang. Chats seized when Dutch police arrested a suspected ShinyHunters member reportedly show negotiators who knew about new victims before the victims themselves did. One Canadian executive has already been arrested, and investigators believe an executive at an unnamed, prestigious US consulting firm helped run the gang’s extortion website.
It’s not the first time: the DOJ sentenced Florida negotiator Angelo Martino to 70 months in July for feeding his own clients’ negotiating positions to the BlackCat ransomware gang, and for helping deploy ransomware against even more victims. The government seized $10 million in assets from him, including a luxury fishing boat and, for reasons unknown, a food truck.
Part of the problem is structural. Some negotiation firms charge a percentage of the ransom paid, which gives the “negotiator” every incentive to pay, and pay big. Firms which refuse to facilitate payments often just get swapped out by the insurance company for ones that will. Meanwhile, ShinyHunters is reportedly furious with Coveware, an incident response firm, for telling victims not to pay, which is probably the best endorsement Coveware could ask for.
An army of AI agents
The Verge reports that security firm Norforge found an attacker using a swarm of mostly autonomous AI agents to break into more than 100 websites, including sites belonging to John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. The agents ran on Cairn, an open-source “general-purpose problem-solving engine”: you give it a starting point and a goal, and the agents work toward it while documenting their progress. That documentation is how they were caught: the attacker’s Cairn instance was exposed to the Internet, along with about 20 others that appear malicious.
According to Reuters, the attacker described their preferred intrusion tactics in fewer than 100 Chinese characters, and each successful breach took about 23 hours. The victims say the impacted sites were standalone support pages, and Cairn’s author insists it was “never a ‘hacking tool'”. Many tools can be double-edged, but the effort balance here is hard to ignore: a short prompt and a day of waiting on one side, and defenders who have to close every hole on the other.
Staples hacked to fund a gift cards
404 Media pieced together, from an unsealed search warrant, that a Chinese organized crime ring hacked Staples in 2023 and issued more than 15,000 gift cards worth over $5 million. Staples’ internal customer support system was supposed to be reachable only from inside the company, but wasn’t. The attackers requested “heap dumps”, a debugging feature which captures everything an application has in memory, and pulled out the active login sessions of customer service reps. With those, they simply logged in as the reps and issued gift cards. A similar trick was used in a hack of payment data from Target years ago, where attackers leveraged access through the air conditioner control network into the cash register network, and then dumped credit cards directly from RAM as they were processed.
If you’ve ever wondered why debugging endpoints left exposed in production show up in every penetration test report, this is why. The gift cards were then laundered the old-fashioned way: crews of shoppers hitting Target stores with phones full of gift cards, buying Apple and Bose gear by the cartload (about $141,000 across 85 Target stores in 18 states in two days), with the goods shipped back to China. The larger ring this fed into reportedly moved over $100 million in gift cards.
PingCAP breach claims
An extortion group calling itself FulcrumSec has posted a leak site claiming a massive breach of PingCAP, makers of the TiDB Cloud managed database service. The group claims it found cloud credentials committed to PingCAP’s own source code repositories, and used them to set up a replication feed of PingCAP’s production control database that re-exported everything to the attackers every six hours for 22 days, without being noticed.
The claims haven’t been independently verified, but they’re very specific: 10.6TB of data, 115,000 customer API keys stored in plaintext, 20 million customer SQL queries, four years of connection logs with customer IP addresses, and 413 private source repositories. The attackers quote a 2022 internal security ticket noting that any member of a customer organization, even a billing-only account, could reset the root password on every database in that organization. Perhaps most damaging, support engineers allegedly pasted live customer credentials into support tickets, including cloud keys with admin access to other companies’ storage. If you’re a TiDB Cloud customer, assume your API keys, connection strings, and anything ever pasted into a support ticket are burned, and rotate accordingly.
Fake WhatsApp on the Play Store
Android Authority found a fake WhatsApp app on Google Play with over half a million downloads, a week after a fake Chrome app racked up over 100,000. The fake copied the real listing’s screenshots and description word for word, and in some cases appeared as a sponsored result when searching for the real app.
The trick that let it linger is Google Play’s “Early Access” program, which disables public reviews. Normally a fake app gets buried in one-star “THIS IS A SCAM” reviews; in Early Access, nobody can see them. As of publication it was still available. “Only install from the official store” is still good advice for family members, but it’s a little less reassuring when the official store is selling ad placement to the fake.
Meta Muse leaks via DNS
Back in September, we covered a serious vulnerability in Muse, Meta’s extremely privileged AI agent. This week, Meta suspended Muse’s chat sharing feature after researchers at Claroc found they could find and read thousands of shared conversations.
Each shared chat got its own web address, with the conversation title as part of the hostname. Hostnames get looked up in DNS, and many DNS lookups are recorded by “passive DNS” services, essentially a giant searchable history of which names have been resolved. One search returned a ready-made table of contents of shared chats. Claroc found 6,800 of them, including a small business loan application, a bank fraud alert with partial account details, and internal company documents. “Secret URL” sharing only works if the URL stays secret, and putting the secret in a DNS hostname is roughly the opposite of that.
Password1 strikes again
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office reprimanded IT provider Ogi Networks and the Welsh public sector data organization Data Cymru over a 2024 ransomware attack which exposed data on 3,300 people, most of them children. The way in? A test account named “Test2”, created in 2012, never reviewed, and protected with the password “Password1”. The local administrator accounts on three systems also shared a single password for the same twelve years.
There’s nothing exotic here, sadly. Old accounts nobody remembers, passwords that would fall to the first guess of any automated tool, and an outsourcing arrangement where each side assumed the other was handling security. None of it makes for exciting headlines, but these are the things that keep causing very real breaches.
Trezor wallets also implanted
As a follow-up to last week’s coverage of hardware implants in Ledger crypto wallets, Kim Zetter reports that Trezor’s claim of “not a single piece of evidence” that its devices were compromised doesn’t quite line up with reality. Joe Grand found implants in two Trezor wallets, bought through Facebook Marketplace and a TikTok shop, and reported them to Trezor in August.
The Trezor attack is different from the Ledger implant. Instead of adding a radio to spy on the screen, the attackers replaced the main microcontroller with one running modified (open source) firmware. The firmware “randomly” generates one of a dozen recovery phrases the attackers already know. To pass Trezor’s integrity checks, it presents a copy of the legitimate firmware for verification before switching to the malicious code. The takeaway hasn’t changed from last week: buy only directly from the vendor, and if you’re holding enough crypto to make this worth someone’s while, consider whether you can really trust any single device.
NGINX gets more critical bugs
F5 has released out-of-band (meaning outside their normal patch schedule) updates for three critical vulnerabilities in NGINX, the web server and reverse proxy that sits in front of a huge chunk of the Internet, and quite possibly in front of the services on your home lab. The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore has a summary: all three are rated CVSS 9.2, can be triggered remotely without authentication, and can crash worker processes or, under the right conditions, allow remote code execution.
The bugs are CVE-2026-15176, a heap overflow in the “alias” and “rewrite” directives; CVE-2026-97205, a use-after-free in asynchronous file I/O combined with Server Side Includes; and CVE-2026-93479, a heap overflow in the “map” directive. Code execution requires the vulnerable configuration to be in use, and requires bypassing ASLR (the randomization of memory layout which makes exploits harder to aim). Affected versions include NGINX Open Source 1.30.5 and below and 1.31.6 and below, NGINX Plus R33 through R37, and a long list of F5’s NGINX-based products, including the Kubernetes Ingress Controller.
Back in May we covered “nginx-poolslip”, where the suggested mitigation was to avoid unnamed regex capture groups in rewrite rules. The mitigation for the “map” bug this time? Use named captures instead of unnamed captures. If you’ve been putting off cleaning up those “$1” references in your config, now’s the time. For the other two, avoid “alias” inside “location” blocks (and the “$request_filename” variable), or disable AIO or SSI, until you can update.
Linux kernel bugs posted to the wrong list
Normally, security bugs in the Linux kernel are reported privately to the kernel security team, which coordinates a fix before details go public. This is “coordinated disclosure”: the bug and fix are published together, ideally giving admins a chance to patch before attackers can start writing exploits. The Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), on the other hand, is about as public as it gets.
Phoronix reports that Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, seemingly by accident, sent a batch of unpatched vulnerability reports straight to LKML. Greg Kroah-Hartman replied to each report asking about the choice of mailing list, which I can only imagine was done with remarkable restraint. The most serious two are both CVSS 9.0 remote code execution bugs in ksmbd, the kernel’s built-in SMB (Windows file sharing) server: an integer underflow in SMB Direct, and a race condition. The rest include local privilege escalation bugs in the networking code, the VMware graphics driver (an out-of-bounds write), and a stack overflow in search-domain TCP query handling, plus an information leak in the NVMe-over-fabrics target code.
Some of the bugs already have patches being tested or queued for future kernel releases, and those will presumably be expedited now. Most systems don’t run ksmbd (the userspace Samba server is far more common), but if you’ve enabled it on a NAS or a home server, it’s worth disabling until patched kernels land. As Phoronix puts it: “the bug and security reports keep on coming in the AI fueled world.”
hackaday.com/2026/10/23/this-w…
RE: chaos.social/users/fluepke/sta…
Bluesky
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- Signal
- RingRTC
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- 3 Posts
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"Signal has resolved a critical-severity vulnerability that could allow a malicious caller to keep audio and video tracks enabled even after the user hung up.
The security defect is tracked as CVE-2026-113380 (CVSS score of 9.3) and impacts RingRTC, the open source library Signal uses for voice and video calls, which is based on WebRTC.
Due to the issue, a remote peer could flood the call’s Finite State Machine (FSM) event queue with junk, and the call would not terminate.
This happened because the hangup was not treated as a kill switch, but as an event added to the FSM event queue; there was no rate limit on peer-originated events; and the hangup event had no priority.
“Flood the queue with junk and the hang-up waits behind attacker noise forever, so the call (microphone, possibly camera) is never torn down,” a GitHub write-up by a researcher reads.
By exploiting the vulnerability, an attacker could keep the audio and video tracks flowing from a target device while the victim believes they ended the call.
The security defect was resolved in RingRTC version 2.72.0, which was released on September 4.
Details on the flaw, however, were published on Tuesday, along with a conceptual proof-of-concept (PoC). NIST added the CVE to the NVD database on Tuesday.
Signal resolved the issue by ensuring that call termination requests do not remain blocked in FSM’s event queue and are detected independently.
Users should update their Signal applications as soon as possible. Otherwise, they should check the call indicator to make sure the call indeed ended."
https://www.securityweek.com/signal-vulnerability-lets-malicious-callers-block-hang-ups/
The Signal RingRTC vulnerability CVE-2026-113380 could keep a call's microphone live after hang-up. Update to RingRTC 2.72.0.
#Signal #RingRTC #CVE2026113380 #WebRTC #Vulnerability #PrivacyFlaw #Messenger #PatchNow
https://meterpreter.org/signal-ringrtc-vulnerability/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social
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CVE-2026-114625: CRITICAL SQL injection in Arista VeloCloud Orchestrator (<5.2.3.18, <6.1.3.10, <6.4.2.12). Actively exploited! Authenticated users can escalate to operator. Patch ASAP. Block 74.82.197.86 & 38.54.50.151. https://radar.offseq.com/threat/attackers-exploit-third-velocloud-orchestrator-zero-day-in-four-months-d21f081e4a87c8fd #OffSeq #Vulnerability #Arista
📰 Arista Patches Exploited VeloCloud Orchestrator Zero-Day
🚨 CRITICAL ZERO-DAY: Arista patches actively exploited SQL injection vulnerability (CVE-2026-114625) in on-prem VeloCloud Orchestrator. Flaw allows superuser control. Patch immediately! #ZeroDay #CVE #Arista #CyberSecurity #SDWAN
Bluesky
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- GitLab
- GitLab
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🚨 Rapid Response: CVE-2026-110264 (CVSS 10.0) allows unauthenticated RCE in GitLab.
On the day of disclosure, Censys observed roughly 82,000 hosts and about 209,000 web properties running GitLab.
Full advisory and Censys queries: https://censys.com/advisory/cve-2026-110264/
#CensysARC #Cybersecurity #GitLab #VulnerabilityManagement #InfoSec
Critical GitLab Vulnerability: CVE-2026-110264 (CVSS 10.0)
GitLab disclosed a critical flaw on 21 October 2026 affecting self-managed GitLab Community and Enterprise Edition.
Request a product demo: https://www.secpoint.com/contact-us.php
Become a SecPoint partner: https://www.secpoint.com/partner-signup.php
#GitLab #CVE2026110264 #SecPointPenetrator #Cybersecurity #VulnerabilityManagement
Literally no one:
Security researchers: PwnEscape, PHP2Shell, GitLab CVE-2026-110264 (CVSS 10.0)
Si votre quotidien ressemble à ça 👇 contactez Bearstech pour l’infogérance de votre infrastructure : https://bearstech.com/contact
🚨 Ruby fixes three regex engine bugs linked to remote code execution risks
Ruby has released versions 4.0.9, 3.4.12 and 3.3.13 to address three memory corruption bugs in its Onigmo regular expression engine.
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The flaws involve a double free and two integer overflow conditions. GitLab found that specially crafted regex patterns could trigger the bugs and potentially allow remote code execution.
Four GitLab vulnerabilities rely on the underlying issues:
• CVE-2026-89078
• CVE-2026-93577
• CVE-2026-97229
• CVE-2026-110264
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Applications are only exposed when they compile regular expressions from attacker-controlled input. Ruby warns that Regexp.timeout and pattern length limits do not reliably prevent exploitation.
Administrators should update to Ruby 4.0.9, 3.4.12 or 3.3.13 and avoid compiling untrusted regex patterns if an immediate upgrade is not possible.
This Week in Security: Record Patch Tuesday, PHP’s Bad Time, The Oldest Vuln, AI Armies, and More
It’s no longer a proper month without Microsoft breaking its own record for security fixes, and October’s Patch Tuesday was no exception. Brian Krebs brings the roundup: more than 1,400 vulnerabilities fixed in a single batch, dwarfing September’s record of nearly 1,000, which itself was about ten times the normal monthly load. According to Tenable, Microsoft has now passed 4,000 CVEs for the year with two months still to go.
Only one of the fixes is for a vulnerability already being exploited in the wild: CVE-2026-96951, a security feature bypass in the Windows Shell affecting Windows 10, 11, and some Server versions. A .NET Framework bypass, CVE-2026-108398, was publicly disclosed before the patch, giving attackers a head start, and with modern AI tooling, it seems like not much of a head start is needed. At least 78 of the bugs are rated critical, and most of those allow remote code execution with little or no user interaction. Windows 10 holdouts can relax a little: Microsoft quietly extended free updates through October 2027. Given the pace of exploitation, this is probably the only way to prevent an Internet-scale meltdown.
Microsoft credits LLM-driven bug hunting for the volume, which leaves the poor admins who have to test and deploy all of this in an unenviable spot. Fortra’s analysis shows that only 26 Microsoft vulnerabilities have landed in the CISA KEV catalog of actively exploited bugs so far this year, so start there. For the rest, the SANS Internet Storm Center and Cisco Talos have the usual breakdowns by severity. Or, you know, just patch everything and hope for the best, which is roughly what everyone does anyhow.
The CA private key is… 4
Originally I was calling this the “big one” for the week, but this week that just keeps on giving. The private keys for eight eMudhra intermediate certificates have been compromised, and the way they were compromised is going to be a security talk punchline for years. Remember the Debian SSL and SSH key debacle? Of that scale.
Some background first. When your browser connects to a website over HTTPS, the site presents a certificate saying “I am example.com”, signed by a Certificate Authority (CA). Your browser and OS ship with a list of trusted root CAs, but roots are too valuable to use day to day, so they sign intermediate certificates, and the intermediates sign the actual website certificates. Whoever holds an intermediate’s private key can mint a certificate for any website, and every client that trusts the root will believe it. The whole system depends on those keys staying secret, and on them being generated properly in the first place.
eMudhra, an Indian CA which sells certificates under the emSign brand, had six TLS intermediates and two code-signing intermediates chaining to the emSign ECC Root CA – G3, which is trusted by Chrome and Apple, and Mozilla. A researcher identified only as Wayne proved the keys were compromised by signing the message “We have a problem here – Wayne” with each of them and sending it to the root programs.
How did Wayne get the keys? Flüpke posted one on Mastodon, and the secret value for the “EM OV TLS CA – G3C” key is… 4. Not four followed by 380 bits of randomness: the integer four. A reply quickly brute-forced the rest, and they’re all equally tiny: 56, 230, 237, 115, 155, 156, and 66. The keys were “incorrectly generated by the CA”, and anyone could recover them from the public certificates, which has been true since they were created in April 2025.
The browsers moved fast. According to The Hacker News, Chrome pushed a block within two hours of the report, and Mozilla blocked the certificates in under three, pulled the root from NSS, and shipped Firefox updates (CVE-2026-113470) for anyone with automatic updates disabled. There are no Certificate Transparency logs of rogue certificates, so modern browsers were never at risk. Everything that isn’t a browser is going to be the real problem and the extremely long tail of this fault: plenty of software never checks for revoked certificates and keeps trusting these keys until its bundled root list is updated.
Go hard-coded the eight bad keys into its standard library (CVE-2026-111943), but as Penligent points out, that only protects Go programs once they’re rebuilt with the new release. Python, Rust, Java, Node.js, curl, and most Linux distributions have updated root bundles, and the we-have-a-problem.com site has a full list, a checker, and manual workarounds for macOS, whose built-in curl and git don’t check revocation. There are also fixes for Linux, Windows, and the BSDs. Update everything, then go rebuild everything you compiled yourself. And then wonder how you’re going to update appliances, IoT devices, cameras, and everything else that fetches code over HTTPS or SSL.
php2shell: PHP gets owned by running out of memory
PHP, the language behind a significant percentage of the web had a rough week. WordPress, Drupal, Magento, phpMyAdmin, and just about every hosting control panel, major ecommerce sites, home project blogs, and even Hackaday itself was potentially impacted. Details of two critical vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, leaked onto Hacker News a day ahead of the embargo, and Huntress covers the scramble that followed as PHP rushed its release out early. Now that patches are available, Ryan Austin of Calif has published the full writeup, demonstrating pre-authentication remote code execution against important apps on default configurations, in PHP versions back to 5.4.0. That’s over a decade of PHP.
The trick is an old one, first found by Stefan Esser back in 2004. PHP enforces a memory limit for each request, and when a request exceeds it, PHP stops immediately with a fatal error. If that happens in the middle of native code updating some internal structure, the structure is left half-built, and the cleanup code that runs afterward trusts it anyhow. That’s a classic “use-after-free” style bug, where the program uses memory that’s already been released or was never properly set up, and those are frequently exploitable. Calif found ways to reliably push a request over the memory limit at exactly the right moment (deeply nested empty file uploads turn out to balloon into hundreds of megabytes of internal tables, while staying under PHP’s upload size limits), and three different places where the interruption leaves a dangerous mess. Austin found the first bug with a generally available LLM, but only because he knew PHP’s twenty-year history of memory-limit bugs well enough to point it in the right direction.
Amazon reports that its honeypots caught a php2shell exploitation attempt on October 17th, four days before the embargo lifted, and that it’s now being broadly exploited. Their advice is worth repeating: for critical bugs on internet-facing systems, measure your patch window in hours, not weeks, and start investigating from the earliest exploitation date, not the disclosure date. If you can’t patch right now, Calif suggests disabling session.upload_progress and removing the memory limit, which comes with its own obvious problems.
One word of caution: alongside the legitimate writeups, there are many self-published “corrected findings” and “proof-of-concept” posts that can’t seem to decide whether their own exploit works, while offering a downloadable “weaponized” bundle. A leaked-bug panic is the perfect time to hand anxious admins a zip file. Read the real advisories, and don’t run random proof-of-concept bundles.
A Sixteen-year-old forever-day in Broadcom WiFi
Quentin Kaiser has the long-form writeup of his Hexacon talk on a bug in Broadcom’s WiFi stack, present since at least 2010, which gives an attacker a root shell on a router from across the street. So called “parking lot” attacks that can happen from someone not even on your property have long been the boogeymen of WiFi security, and it’s been a little bit since we’ve gotten a new one.
The bug lives in WPS, WiFi Protected Setup: the “push the button on your router and then on your printer” pairing system that was supposed to save people from typing long WiFi passwords. WPS has a long and spotty security history, and this bug can be triggered over the air without knowing the network password, and without completing a WPS pairing. Kaiser’s demos show him pulling the WiFi password straight out of a router’s settings and sending it back over WiFi, and getting a fully interactive remote shell carried entirely over WiFi frames. No Internet connection required.
The really grim part is the patch history. Broadcom quietly released an incomplete fix in 2018, then suggested vendors switch to the open-source hostapd instead. For the older eCos-based chipsets that’s effectively never going to happen, which makes it a permanent “forever-day”. Broadcom refused to assign a CVE, and because Broadcom is its own CVE authority, CERT/CC closed Kaiser’s case the same day it was opened.
As of disclosure, the cable and DSL gateways he tested from three of Belgium’s four major ISPs were still vulnerable, and his napkin math puts it at over a million and a half devices in Belgium alone. Broadcom chips are, of course, sold everywhere. If you’re running ISP-provided hardware, there isn’t much you can do about the firmware. Turning off WPS can’t hurt if your router allows it, although Kaiser doesn’t say whether that blocks the attack. Disabling the gateway’s own WiFi and running your own access point that you can actually update is the safer bet.
GitLab regex bug reaches back twelve years
GitLab has released fixes for CVE-2026-110264, a maximum-severity CVSS 10.0 bug allowing unauthenticated attackers to run code on self-hosted GitLab servers. The flaw is an integer overflow when compiling a specially crafted regular expression in Onigmo, the Ruby regex engine which GitLab bundles into its own packages, so it affects every version back to GitLab 7.0 in 2014.
This is the fourth regex engine code execution bug from the same researcher in about a month (after CVE-2026-97229, CVE-2026-93577, and CVE-2026-89078), and comes with a nasty gotcha: the new fixed versions are one release past the October 12th fix, so if you diligently patched nine days ago, you’re vulnerable again. GitLab hasn’t said what’s needed to trigger the bug, so there’s no configuration workaround. If you’re running GitLab at home or in the shop, patch, and budget for some downtime while the database migrations run.
Node.js Brotli bug
Node.js shipped security updates for the 22, 24, and 26 branches, headlined by CVE-2026-111497, an out-of-bounds write in the bundled Brotli decompression library. Vercel’s advisory notes that researchers have demonstrated both memory leaks and command execution.
Node doesn’t decompress Brotli data on its own, but plenty of applications and libraries do, whether on incoming requests or on responses fetched from other servers. Vercel deployed firewall rules for traffic coming into its own platform, but no firewall can protect your code from a malicious response it goes and fetches itself. Node 20 is end-of-life and won’t be fixed. As a bonus, the same releases carry the eMudhra certificate distrust, so that’s two reasons to go update.
Header accordions and HTTP/3
HTTP/3 is the newest version of the protocol behind the web, running over QUIC (a UDP-based transport) instead of TCP. To save bandwidth, it compresses request headers using a scheme called QPACK: common headers can be sent as a one-byte reference into a table instead of the full text. Compression is great for bandwidth, but any time a small input can turn into a big output, there’s a risk of a “decompression bomb”. Similar tricks resulted in “zip bombs” in the 2000s, and what’s old is new again.
FoxIO found exactly that in seven of the ten HTTP/3 implementations they tested. One approach packs about 160,000 unique short headers into a single 1MB request; another stores one 4KB header and then references it thousands of times, a 4000-to-1 amplification. The HTTP/3 spec already says how to limit the decoded size, but implementations got it wrong in every possible way: checking only the compressed size, decompressing everything before checking, ignoring the per-header overhead, or reading the limit setting and then never enforcing it.
Fixed so far are quic-go (CVE-2025-64702), which is used by Caddy, Traefik, and Cloudflare’s tunnels; Cloudflare’s quiche (CVE-2026-12523); lsquic 4.9.0; and even Wireshark (CVE-2025-13945), whose QPACK decoder crashed during testing. Bun, the hyperium h3 Rust crate, and aioquic/mitmproxy remain unpatched. Bun gets special mention for an integer overflow that turns a single 516KB request into a permanent 100% CPU infinite loop. The lesson applies to any compression format: limit the decompressed size as you go, not just the bytes on the wire.
Metamorphic macOS ransomware
Patrick Wardle of Objective-See digs into Heartbreaker, macOS ransomware written in Rust that has sat on VirusTotal since May 2025, undetected by every antivirus engine.
Most antivirus detection relies on signatures: a hash or byte pattern identifying a known-bad file. Metamorphic malware tries to dodge signatures by rewriting itself so every copy looks different while behaving the same. Heartbreaker takes a delightfully brute-force approach: it carries its own Rust source code inside the binary, and after running, it shuffles variable names, adds junk functions, installs a Rust compiler if one isn’t present, recompiles itself, and replaces itself with the new build. It is about as subtle as a brick through a window.
As ransomware it’s not very scary. It only encrypts the Downloads folder, and uses the same hard-coded key for every victim, so Wardle simply wrote a decryptor. The rebuilding also depends on a GitHub library which has since disappeared, so it mostly fails anyhow. Wardle uses it to demonstrate his free RansomWhere? tool, which ignores signatures completely and instead watches for an untrusted process rapidly writing files that look encrypted (using a bit of entropy math). The malware can change its hash all day long, but to ransom anything it still has to encrypt the files, and that’s much harder to disguise.
UpdraftPlus vendor breached
TeamUpdraft, the company behind the very popular UpdraftPlus WordPress backup plugin, disclosed a breach of their customer database over the weekend. Names, emails, addresses, hashed passwords, and two-factor authentication settings were taken, and more worryingly, the connection keys for UpdraftCentral, their cloud dashboard for managing many WordPress sites at once. UpdraftPlus previously made an appearance back in June, when a vulnerability in the plugin was used in the Awesome Motive supply chain attack.
Those UpdraftCentral keys can send commands to every connected site, which turns one vendor breach into a remote control for potentially thousands of customer websites. TeamUpdraft has released UpdraftPlus 1.26.12 and 2.26.12, which automatically disconnect the old keys. If you or anyone you know manages WordPress sites through UpdraftCentral, log in to each site directly, update the plugin, and check for unexpected admin accounts and plugins (including the easy-to-miss “Must-Use” plugins tab).
Spyware delivered by ad network
Citizen Lab has published research showing that the Israeli ad-tech company Discover-Tech helped deliver spyware through ordinary online ads, targeting at least 45 devices at the news outlet Al Jazeera in 2024 and 2025. Citizen Lab attributes the spyware to Candiru, a commercial spyware vendor.
When you load a web page with ads, the ad slot is typically auctioned off in real time to the highest bidder, based on a profile of who you seem to be. This “programmatic advertising” system is, by design, a mechanism for running third-party content on a very specific person’s device. It’s easy to see why that’s attractive to a spyware vendor. According to Citizen Lab, Discover-Tech’s platform could profile users and infect a device just by displaying an ad, no click required. CPJ reports that the company’s ads reached nearly 200,000 websites and apps, and researchers at Confiant found them on government networks including the US Department of Defense, NATO, and the UN.
Malicious ads are nothing new, but this is the first public evidence of an ad platform being used for targeted, zero-click spyware delivery. “Don’t click on ads” has always been good advice. An ad blocker isn’t just a quality-of-life improvement; it’s attack surface reduction.
Ransomware negotiators on the wrong side
Last week we covered a ransomware “recovery” CEO charged with secretly paying ransoms while billing customers for decryption. This week, Brian Krebs reports that investigators chasing ShinyHunters (the group behind the FBI hack) have identified executives at two ransomware negotiation firms with unusually friendly relationships with the gang. Chats seized when Dutch police arrested a suspected ShinyHunters member reportedly show negotiators who knew about new victims before the victims themselves did. One Canadian executive has already been arrested, and investigators believe an executive at an unnamed, prestigious US consulting firm helped run the gang’s extortion website.
It’s not the first time: the DOJ sentenced Florida negotiator Angelo Martino to 70 months in July for feeding his own clients’ negotiating positions to the BlackCat ransomware gang, and for helping deploy ransomware against even more victims. The government seized $10 million in assets from him, including a luxury fishing boat and, for reasons unknown, a food truck.
Part of the problem is structural. Some negotiation firms charge a percentage of the ransom paid, which gives the “negotiator” every incentive to pay, and pay big. Firms which refuse to facilitate payments often just get swapped out by the insurance company for ones that will. Meanwhile, ShinyHunters is reportedly furious with Coveware, an incident response firm, for telling victims not to pay, which is probably the best endorsement Coveware could ask for.
An army of AI agents
The Verge reports that security firm Norforge found an attacker using a swarm of mostly autonomous AI agents to break into more than 100 websites, including sites belonging to John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. The agents ran on Cairn, an open-source “general-purpose problem-solving engine”: you give it a starting point and a goal, and the agents work toward it while documenting their progress. That documentation is how they were caught: the attacker’s Cairn instance was exposed to the Internet, along with about 20 others that appear malicious.
According to Reuters, the attacker described their preferred intrusion tactics in fewer than 100 Chinese characters, and each successful breach took about 23 hours. The victims say the impacted sites were standalone support pages, and Cairn’s author insists it was “never a ‘hacking tool'”. Many tools can be double-edged, but the effort balance here is hard to ignore: a short prompt and a day of waiting on one side, and defenders who have to close every hole on the other.
Staples hacked to fund a gift cards
404 Media pieced together, from an unsealed search warrant, that a Chinese organized crime ring hacked Staples in 2023 and issued more than 15,000 gift cards worth over $5 million. Staples’ internal customer support system was supposed to be reachable only from inside the company, but wasn’t. The attackers requested “heap dumps”, a debugging feature which captures everything an application has in memory, and pulled out the active login sessions of customer service reps. With those, they simply logged in as the reps and issued gift cards. A similar trick was used in a hack of payment data from Target years ago, where attackers leveraged access through the air conditioner control network into the cash register network, and then dumped credit cards directly from RAM as they were processed.
If you’ve ever wondered why debugging endpoints left exposed in production show up in every penetration test report, this is why. The gift cards were then laundered the old-fashioned way: crews of shoppers hitting Target stores with phones full of gift cards, buying Apple and Bose gear by the cartload (about $141,000 across 85 Target stores in 18 states in two days), with the goods shipped back to China. The larger ring this fed into reportedly moved over $100 million in gift cards.
PingCAP breach claims
An extortion group calling itself FulcrumSec has posted a leak site claiming a massive breach of PingCAP, makers of the TiDB Cloud managed database service. The group claims it found cloud credentials committed to PingCAP’s own source code repositories, and used them to set up a replication feed of PingCAP’s production control database that re-exported everything to the attackers every six hours for 22 days, without being noticed.
The claims haven’t been independently verified, but they’re very specific: 10.6TB of data, 115,000 customer API keys stored in plaintext, 20 million customer SQL queries, four years of connection logs with customer IP addresses, and 413 private source repositories. The attackers quote a 2022 internal security ticket noting that any member of a customer organization, even a billing-only account, could reset the root password on every database in that organization. Perhaps most damaging, support engineers allegedly pasted live customer credentials into support tickets, including cloud keys with admin access to other companies’ storage. If you’re a TiDB Cloud customer, assume your API keys, connection strings, and anything ever pasted into a support ticket are burned, and rotate accordingly.
Fake WhatsApp on the Play Store
Android Authority found a fake WhatsApp app on Google Play with over half a million downloads, a week after a fake Chrome app racked up over 100,000. The fake copied the real listing’s screenshots and description word for word, and in some cases appeared as a sponsored result when searching for the real app.
The trick that let it linger is Google Play’s “Early Access” program, which disables public reviews. Normally a fake app gets buried in one-star “THIS IS A SCAM” reviews; in Early Access, nobody can see them. As of publication it was still available. “Only install from the official store” is still good advice for family members, but it’s a little less reassuring when the official store is selling ad placement to the fake.
Meta Muse leaks via DNS
Back in September, we covered a serious vulnerability in Muse, Meta’s extremely privileged AI agent. This week, Meta suspended Muse’s chat sharing feature after researchers at Claroc found they could find and read thousands of shared conversations.
Each shared chat got its own web address, with the conversation title as part of the hostname. Hostnames get looked up in DNS, and many DNS lookups are recorded by “passive DNS” services, essentially a giant searchable history of which names have been resolved. One search returned a ready-made table of contents of shared chats. Claroc found 6,800 of them, including a small business loan application, a bank fraud alert with partial account details, and internal company documents. “Secret URL” sharing only works if the URL stays secret, and putting the secret in a DNS hostname is roughly the opposite of that.
Password1 strikes again
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office reprimanded IT provider Ogi Networks and the Welsh public sector data organization Data Cymru over a 2024 ransomware attack which exposed data on 3,300 people, most of them children. The way in? A test account named “Test2”, created in 2012, never reviewed, and protected with the password “Password1”. The local administrator accounts on three systems also shared a single password for the same twelve years.
There’s nothing exotic here, sadly. Old accounts nobody remembers, passwords that would fall to the first guess of any automated tool, and an outsourcing arrangement where each side assumed the other was handling security. None of it makes for exciting headlines, but these are the things that keep causing very real breaches.
Trezor wallets also implanted
As a follow-up to last week’s coverage of hardware implants in Ledger crypto wallets, Kim Zetter reports that Trezor’s claim of “not a single piece of evidence” that its devices were compromised doesn’t quite line up with reality. Joe Grand found implants in two Trezor wallets, bought through Facebook Marketplace and a TikTok shop, and reported them to Trezor in August.
The Trezor attack is different from the Ledger implant. Instead of adding a radio to spy on the screen, the attackers replaced the main microcontroller with one running modified (open source) firmware. The firmware “randomly” generates one of a dozen recovery phrases the attackers already know. To pass Trezor’s integrity checks, it presents a copy of the legitimate firmware for verification before switching to the malicious code. The takeaway hasn’t changed from last week: buy only directly from the vendor, and if you’re holding enough crypto to make this worth someone’s while, consider whether you can really trust any single device.
NGINX gets more critical bugs
F5 has released out-of-band (meaning outside their normal patch schedule) updates for three critical vulnerabilities in NGINX, the web server and reverse proxy that sits in front of a huge chunk of the Internet, and quite possibly in front of the services on your home lab. The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore has a summary: all three are rated CVSS 9.2, can be triggered remotely without authentication, and can crash worker processes or, under the right conditions, allow remote code execution.
The bugs are CVE-2026-15176, a heap overflow in the “alias” and “rewrite” directives; CVE-2026-97205, a use-after-free in asynchronous file I/O combined with Server Side Includes; and CVE-2026-93479, a heap overflow in the “map” directive. Code execution requires the vulnerable configuration to be in use, and requires bypassing ASLR (the randomization of memory layout which makes exploits harder to aim). Affected versions include NGINX Open Source 1.30.5 and below and 1.31.6 and below, NGINX Plus R33 through R37, and a long list of F5’s NGINX-based products, including the Kubernetes Ingress Controller.
Back in May we covered “nginx-poolslip”, where the suggested mitigation was to avoid unnamed regex capture groups in rewrite rules. The mitigation for the “map” bug this time? Use named captures instead of unnamed captures. If you’ve been putting off cleaning up those “$1” references in your config, now’s the time. For the other two, avoid “alias” inside “location” blocks (and the “$request_filename” variable), or disable AIO or SSI, until you can update.
Linux kernel bugs posted to the wrong list
Normally, security bugs in the Linux kernel are reported privately to the kernel security team, which coordinates a fix before details go public. This is “coordinated disclosure”: the bug and fix are published together, ideally giving admins a chance to patch before attackers can start writing exploits. The Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), on the other hand, is about as public as it gets.
Phoronix reports that Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, seemingly by accident, sent a batch of unpatched vulnerability reports straight to LKML. Greg Kroah-Hartman replied to each report asking about the choice of mailing list, which I can only imagine was done with remarkable restraint. The most serious two are both CVSS 9.0 remote code execution bugs in ksmbd, the kernel’s built-in SMB (Windows file sharing) server: an integer underflow in SMB Direct, and a race condition. The rest include local privilege escalation bugs in the networking code, the VMware graphics driver (an out-of-bounds write), and a stack overflow in search-domain TCP query handling, plus an information leak in the NVMe-over-fabrics target code.
Some of the bugs already have patches being tested or queued for future kernel releases, and those will presumably be expedited now. Most systems don’t run ksmbd (the userspace Samba server is far more common), but if you’ve enabled it on a NAS or a home server, it’s worth disabling until patched kernels land. As Phoronix puts it: “the bug and security reports keep on coming in the AI fueled world.”
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🚨 Ruby fixes three regex engine bugs linked to remote code execution risks
Ruby has released versions 4.0.9, 3.4.12 and 3.3.13 to address three memory corruption bugs in its Onigmo regular expression engine.
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The flaws involve a double free and two integer overflow conditions. GitLab found that specially crafted regex patterns could trigger the bugs and potentially allow remote code execution.
Four GitLab vulnerabilities rely on the underlying issues:
• CVE-2026-89078
• CVE-2026-93577
• CVE-2026-97229
• CVE-2026-110264
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Applications are only exposed when they compile regular expressions from attacker-controlled input. Ruby warns that Regexp.timeout and pattern length limits do not reliably prevent exploitation.
Administrators should update to Ruby 4.0.9, 3.4.12 or 3.3.13 and avoid compiling untrusted regex patterns if an immediate upgrade is not possible.
This Week in Security: Record Patch Tuesday, PHP’s Bad Time, The Oldest Vuln, AI Armies, and More
It’s no longer a proper month without Microsoft breaking its own record for security fixes, and October’s Patch Tuesday was no exception. Brian Krebs brings the roundup: more than 1,400 vulnerabilities fixed in a single batch, dwarfing September’s record of nearly 1,000, which itself was about ten times the normal monthly load. According to Tenable, Microsoft has now passed 4,000 CVEs for the year with two months still to go.
Only one of the fixes is for a vulnerability already being exploited in the wild: CVE-2026-96951, a security feature bypass in the Windows Shell affecting Windows 10, 11, and some Server versions. A .NET Framework bypass, CVE-2026-108398, was publicly disclosed before the patch, giving attackers a head start, and with modern AI tooling, it seems like not much of a head start is needed. At least 78 of the bugs are rated critical, and most of those allow remote code execution with little or no user interaction. Windows 10 holdouts can relax a little: Microsoft quietly extended free updates through October 2027. Given the pace of exploitation, this is probably the only way to prevent an Internet-scale meltdown.
Microsoft credits LLM-driven bug hunting for the volume, which leaves the poor admins who have to test and deploy all of this in an unenviable spot. Fortra’s analysis shows that only 26 Microsoft vulnerabilities have landed in the CISA KEV catalog of actively exploited bugs so far this year, so start there. For the rest, the SANS Internet Storm Center and Cisco Talos have the usual breakdowns by severity. Or, you know, just patch everything and hope for the best, which is roughly what everyone does anyhow.
The CA private key is… 4
Originally I was calling this the “big one” for the week, but this week that just keeps on giving. The private keys for eight eMudhra intermediate certificates have been compromised, and the way they were compromised is going to be a security talk punchline for years. Remember the Debian SSL and SSH key debacle? Of that scale.
Some background first. When your browser connects to a website over HTTPS, the site presents a certificate saying “I am example.com”, signed by a Certificate Authority (CA). Your browser and OS ship with a list of trusted root CAs, but roots are too valuable to use day to day, so they sign intermediate certificates, and the intermediates sign the actual website certificates. Whoever holds an intermediate’s private key can mint a certificate for any website, and every client that trusts the root will believe it. The whole system depends on those keys staying secret, and on them being generated properly in the first place.
eMudhra, an Indian CA which sells certificates under the emSign brand, had six TLS intermediates and two code-signing intermediates chaining to the emSign ECC Root CA – G3, which is trusted by Chrome and Apple, and Mozilla. A researcher identified only as Wayne proved the keys were compromised by signing the message “We have a problem here – Wayne” with each of them and sending it to the root programs.
How did Wayne get the keys? Flüpke posted one on Mastodon, and the secret value for the “EM OV TLS CA – G3C” key is… 4. Not four followed by 380 bits of randomness: the integer four. A reply quickly brute-forced the rest, and they’re all equally tiny: 56, 230, 237, 115, 155, 156, and 66. The keys were “incorrectly generated by the CA”, and anyone could recover them from the public certificates, which has been true since they were created in April 2025.
The browsers moved fast. According to The Hacker News, Chrome pushed a block within two hours of the report, and Mozilla blocked the certificates in under three, pulled the root from NSS, and shipped Firefox updates (CVE-2026-113470) for anyone with automatic updates disabled. There are no Certificate Transparency logs of rogue certificates, so modern browsers were never at risk. Everything that isn’t a browser is going to be the real problem and the extremely long tail of this fault: plenty of software never checks for revoked certificates and keeps trusting these keys until its bundled root list is updated.
Go hard-coded the eight bad keys into its standard library (CVE-2026-111943), but as Penligent points out, that only protects Go programs once they’re rebuilt with the new release. Python, Rust, Java, Node.js, curl, and most Linux distributions have updated root bundles, and the we-have-a-problem.com site has a full list, a checker, and manual workarounds for macOS, whose built-in curl and git don’t check revocation. There are also fixes for Linux, Windows, and the BSDs. Update everything, then go rebuild everything you compiled yourself. And then wonder how you’re going to update appliances, IoT devices, cameras, and everything else that fetches code over HTTPS or SSL.
php2shell: PHP gets owned by running out of memory
PHP, the language behind a significant percentage of the web had a rough week. WordPress, Drupal, Magento, phpMyAdmin, and just about every hosting control panel, major ecommerce sites, home project blogs, and even Hackaday itself was potentially impacted. Details of two critical vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, leaked onto Hacker News a day ahead of the embargo, and Huntress covers the scramble that followed as PHP rushed its release out early. Now that patches are available, Ryan Austin of Calif has published the full writeup, demonstrating pre-authentication remote code execution against important apps on default configurations, in PHP versions back to 5.4.0. That’s over a decade of PHP.
The trick is an old one, first found by Stefan Esser back in 2004. PHP enforces a memory limit for each request, and when a request exceeds it, PHP stops immediately with a fatal error. If that happens in the middle of native code updating some internal structure, the structure is left half-built, and the cleanup code that runs afterward trusts it anyhow. That’s a classic “use-after-free” style bug, where the program uses memory that’s already been released or was never properly set up, and those are frequently exploitable. Calif found ways to reliably push a request over the memory limit at exactly the right moment (deeply nested empty file uploads turn out to balloon into hundreds of megabytes of internal tables, while staying under PHP’s upload size limits), and three different places where the interruption leaves a dangerous mess. Austin found the first bug with a generally available LLM, but only because he knew PHP’s twenty-year history of memory-limit bugs well enough to point it in the right direction.
Amazon reports that its honeypots caught a php2shell exploitation attempt on October 17th, four days before the embargo lifted, and that it’s now being broadly exploited. Their advice is worth repeating: for critical bugs on internet-facing systems, measure your patch window in hours, not weeks, and start investigating from the earliest exploitation date, not the disclosure date. If you can’t patch right now, Calif suggests disabling session.upload_progress and removing the memory limit, which comes with its own obvious problems.
One word of caution: alongside the legitimate writeups, there are many self-published “corrected findings” and “proof-of-concept” posts that can’t seem to decide whether their own exploit works, while offering a downloadable “weaponized” bundle. A leaked-bug panic is the perfect time to hand anxious admins a zip file. Read the real advisories, and don’t run random proof-of-concept bundles.
A Sixteen-year-old forever-day in Broadcom WiFi
Quentin Kaiser has the long-form writeup of his Hexacon talk on a bug in Broadcom’s WiFi stack, present since at least 2010, which gives an attacker a root shell on a router from across the street. So called “parking lot” attacks that can happen from someone not even on your property have long been the boogeymen of WiFi security, and it’s been a little bit since we’ve gotten a new one.
The bug lives in WPS, WiFi Protected Setup: the “push the button on your router and then on your printer” pairing system that was supposed to save people from typing long WiFi passwords. WPS has a long and spotty security history, and this bug can be triggered over the air without knowing the network password, and without completing a WPS pairing. Kaiser’s demos show him pulling the WiFi password straight out of a router’s settings and sending it back over WiFi, and getting a fully interactive remote shell carried entirely over WiFi frames. No Internet connection required.
The really grim part is the patch history. Broadcom quietly released an incomplete fix in 2018, then suggested vendors switch to the open-source hostapd instead. For the older eCos-based chipsets that’s effectively never going to happen, which makes it a permanent “forever-day”. Broadcom refused to assign a CVE, and because Broadcom is its own CVE authority, CERT/CC closed Kaiser’s case the same day it was opened.
As of disclosure, the cable and DSL gateways he tested from three of Belgium’s four major ISPs were still vulnerable, and his napkin math puts it at over a million and a half devices in Belgium alone. Broadcom chips are, of course, sold everywhere. If you’re running ISP-provided hardware, there isn’t much you can do about the firmware. Turning off WPS can’t hurt if your router allows it, although Kaiser doesn’t say whether that blocks the attack. Disabling the gateway’s own WiFi and running your own access point that you can actually update is the safer bet.
GitLab regex bug reaches back twelve years
GitLab has released fixes for CVE-2026-110264, a maximum-severity CVSS 10.0 bug allowing unauthenticated attackers to run code on self-hosted GitLab servers. The flaw is an integer overflow when compiling a specially crafted regular expression in Onigmo, the Ruby regex engine which GitLab bundles into its own packages, so it affects every version back to GitLab 7.0 in 2014.
This is the fourth regex engine code execution bug from the same researcher in about a month (after CVE-2026-97229, CVE-2026-93577, and CVE-2026-89078), and comes with a nasty gotcha: the new fixed versions are one release past the October 12th fix, so if you diligently patched nine days ago, you’re vulnerable again. GitLab hasn’t said what’s needed to trigger the bug, so there’s no configuration workaround. If you’re running GitLab at home or in the shop, patch, and budget for some downtime while the database migrations run.
Node.js Brotli bug
Node.js shipped security updates for the 22, 24, and 26 branches, headlined by CVE-2026-111497, an out-of-bounds write in the bundled Brotli decompression library. Vercel’s advisory notes that researchers have demonstrated both memory leaks and command execution.
Node doesn’t decompress Brotli data on its own, but plenty of applications and libraries do, whether on incoming requests or on responses fetched from other servers. Vercel deployed firewall rules for traffic coming into its own platform, but no firewall can protect your code from a malicious response it goes and fetches itself. Node 20 is end-of-life and won’t be fixed. As a bonus, the same releases carry the eMudhra certificate distrust, so that’s two reasons to go update.
Header accordions and HTTP/3
HTTP/3 is the newest version of the protocol behind the web, running over QUIC (a UDP-based transport) instead of TCP. To save bandwidth, it compresses request headers using a scheme called QPACK: common headers can be sent as a one-byte reference into a table instead of the full text. Compression is great for bandwidth, but any time a small input can turn into a big output, there’s a risk of a “decompression bomb”. Similar tricks resulted in “zip bombs” in the 2000s, and what’s old is new again.
FoxIO found exactly that in seven of the ten HTTP/3 implementations they tested. One approach packs about 160,000 unique short headers into a single 1MB request; another stores one 4KB header and then references it thousands of times, a 4000-to-1 amplification. The HTTP/3 spec already says how to limit the decoded size, but implementations got it wrong in every possible way: checking only the compressed size, decompressing everything before checking, ignoring the per-header overhead, or reading the limit setting and then never enforcing it.
Fixed so far are quic-go (CVE-2025-64702), which is used by Caddy, Traefik, and Cloudflare’s tunnels; Cloudflare’s quiche (CVE-2026-12523); lsquic 4.9.0; and even Wireshark (CVE-2025-13945), whose QPACK decoder crashed during testing. Bun, the hyperium h3 Rust crate, and aioquic/mitmproxy remain unpatched. Bun gets special mention for an integer overflow that turns a single 516KB request into a permanent 100% CPU infinite loop. The lesson applies to any compression format: limit the decompressed size as you go, not just the bytes on the wire.
Metamorphic macOS ransomware
Patrick Wardle of Objective-See digs into Heartbreaker, macOS ransomware written in Rust that has sat on VirusTotal since May 2025, undetected by every antivirus engine.
Most antivirus detection relies on signatures: a hash or byte pattern identifying a known-bad file. Metamorphic malware tries to dodge signatures by rewriting itself so every copy looks different while behaving the same. Heartbreaker takes a delightfully brute-force approach: it carries its own Rust source code inside the binary, and after running, it shuffles variable names, adds junk functions, installs a Rust compiler if one isn’t present, recompiles itself, and replaces itself with the new build. It is about as subtle as a brick through a window.
As ransomware it’s not very scary. It only encrypts the Downloads folder, and uses the same hard-coded key for every victim, so Wardle simply wrote a decryptor. The rebuilding also depends on a GitHub library which has since disappeared, so it mostly fails anyhow. Wardle uses it to demonstrate his free RansomWhere? tool, which ignores signatures completely and instead watches for an untrusted process rapidly writing files that look encrypted (using a bit of entropy math). The malware can change its hash all day long, but to ransom anything it still has to encrypt the files, and that’s much harder to disguise.
UpdraftPlus vendor breached
TeamUpdraft, the company behind the very popular UpdraftPlus WordPress backup plugin, disclosed a breach of their customer database over the weekend. Names, emails, addresses, hashed passwords, and two-factor authentication settings were taken, and more worryingly, the connection keys for UpdraftCentral, their cloud dashboard for managing many WordPress sites at once. UpdraftPlus previously made an appearance back in June, when a vulnerability in the plugin was used in the Awesome Motive supply chain attack.
Those UpdraftCentral keys can send commands to every connected site, which turns one vendor breach into a remote control for potentially thousands of customer websites. TeamUpdraft has released UpdraftPlus 1.26.12 and 2.26.12, which automatically disconnect the old keys. If you or anyone you know manages WordPress sites through UpdraftCentral, log in to each site directly, update the plugin, and check for unexpected admin accounts and plugins (including the easy-to-miss “Must-Use” plugins tab).
Spyware delivered by ad network
Citizen Lab has published research showing that the Israeli ad-tech company Discover-Tech helped deliver spyware through ordinary online ads, targeting at least 45 devices at the news outlet Al Jazeera in 2024 and 2025. Citizen Lab attributes the spyware to Candiru, a commercial spyware vendor.
When you load a web page with ads, the ad slot is typically auctioned off in real time to the highest bidder, based on a profile of who you seem to be. This “programmatic advertising” system is, by design, a mechanism for running third-party content on a very specific person’s device. It’s easy to see why that’s attractive to a spyware vendor. According to Citizen Lab, Discover-Tech’s platform could profile users and infect a device just by displaying an ad, no click required. CPJ reports that the company’s ads reached nearly 200,000 websites and apps, and researchers at Confiant found them on government networks including the US Department of Defense, NATO, and the UN.
Malicious ads are nothing new, but this is the first public evidence of an ad platform being used for targeted, zero-click spyware delivery. “Don’t click on ads” has always been good advice. An ad blocker isn’t just a quality-of-life improvement; it’s attack surface reduction.
Ransomware negotiators on the wrong side
Last week we covered a ransomware “recovery” CEO charged with secretly paying ransoms while billing customers for decryption. This week, Brian Krebs reports that investigators chasing ShinyHunters (the group behind the FBI hack) have identified executives at two ransomware negotiation firms with unusually friendly relationships with the gang. Chats seized when Dutch police arrested a suspected ShinyHunters member reportedly show negotiators who knew about new victims before the victims themselves did. One Canadian executive has already been arrested, and investigators believe an executive at an unnamed, prestigious US consulting firm helped run the gang’s extortion website.
It’s not the first time: the DOJ sentenced Florida negotiator Angelo Martino to 70 months in July for feeding his own clients’ negotiating positions to the BlackCat ransomware gang, and for helping deploy ransomware against even more victims. The government seized $10 million in assets from him, including a luxury fishing boat and, for reasons unknown, a food truck.
Part of the problem is structural. Some negotiation firms charge a percentage of the ransom paid, which gives the “negotiator” every incentive to pay, and pay big. Firms which refuse to facilitate payments often just get swapped out by the insurance company for ones that will. Meanwhile, ShinyHunters is reportedly furious with Coveware, an incident response firm, for telling victims not to pay, which is probably the best endorsement Coveware could ask for.
An army of AI agents
The Verge reports that security firm Norforge found an attacker using a swarm of mostly autonomous AI agents to break into more than 100 websites, including sites belonging to John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. The agents ran on Cairn, an open-source “general-purpose problem-solving engine”: you give it a starting point and a goal, and the agents work toward it while documenting their progress. That documentation is how they were caught: the attacker’s Cairn instance was exposed to the Internet, along with about 20 others that appear malicious.
According to Reuters, the attacker described their preferred intrusion tactics in fewer than 100 Chinese characters, and each successful breach took about 23 hours. The victims say the impacted sites were standalone support pages, and Cairn’s author insists it was “never a ‘hacking tool'”. Many tools can be double-edged, but the effort balance here is hard to ignore: a short prompt and a day of waiting on one side, and defenders who have to close every hole on the other.
Staples hacked to fund a gift cards
404 Media pieced together, from an unsealed search warrant, that a Chinese organized crime ring hacked Staples in 2023 and issued more than 15,000 gift cards worth over $5 million. Staples’ internal customer support system was supposed to be reachable only from inside the company, but wasn’t. The attackers requested “heap dumps”, a debugging feature which captures everything an application has in memory, and pulled out the active login sessions of customer service reps. With those, they simply logged in as the reps and issued gift cards. A similar trick was used in a hack of payment data from Target years ago, where attackers leveraged access through the air conditioner control network into the cash register network, and then dumped credit cards directly from RAM as they were processed.
If you’ve ever wondered why debugging endpoints left exposed in production show up in every penetration test report, this is why. The gift cards were then laundered the old-fashioned way: crews of shoppers hitting Target stores with phones full of gift cards, buying Apple and Bose gear by the cartload (about $141,000 across 85 Target stores in 18 states in two days), with the goods shipped back to China. The larger ring this fed into reportedly moved over $100 million in gift cards.
PingCAP breach claims
An extortion group calling itself FulcrumSec has posted a leak site claiming a massive breach of PingCAP, makers of the TiDB Cloud managed database service. The group claims it found cloud credentials committed to PingCAP’s own source code repositories, and used them to set up a replication feed of PingCAP’s production control database that re-exported everything to the attackers every six hours for 22 days, without being noticed.
The claims haven’t been independently verified, but they’re very specific: 10.6TB of data, 115,000 customer API keys stored in plaintext, 20 million customer SQL queries, four years of connection logs with customer IP addresses, and 413 private source repositories. The attackers quote a 2022 internal security ticket noting that any member of a customer organization, even a billing-only account, could reset the root password on every database in that organization. Perhaps most damaging, support engineers allegedly pasted live customer credentials into support tickets, including cloud keys with admin access to other companies’ storage. If you’re a TiDB Cloud customer, assume your API keys, connection strings, and anything ever pasted into a support ticket are burned, and rotate accordingly.
Fake WhatsApp on the Play Store
Android Authority found a fake WhatsApp app on Google Play with over half a million downloads, a week after a fake Chrome app racked up over 100,000. The fake copied the real listing’s screenshots and description word for word, and in some cases appeared as a sponsored result when searching for the real app.
The trick that let it linger is Google Play’s “Early Access” program, which disables public reviews. Normally a fake app gets buried in one-star “THIS IS A SCAM” reviews; in Early Access, nobody can see them. As of publication it was still available. “Only install from the official store” is still good advice for family members, but it’s a little less reassuring when the official store is selling ad placement to the fake.
Meta Muse leaks via DNS
Back in September, we covered a serious vulnerability in Muse, Meta’s extremely privileged AI agent. This week, Meta suspended Muse’s chat sharing feature after researchers at Claroc found they could find and read thousands of shared conversations.
Each shared chat got its own web address, with the conversation title as part of the hostname. Hostnames get looked up in DNS, and many DNS lookups are recorded by “passive DNS” services, essentially a giant searchable history of which names have been resolved. One search returned a ready-made table of contents of shared chats. Claroc found 6,800 of them, including a small business loan application, a bank fraud alert with partial account details, and internal company documents. “Secret URL” sharing only works if the URL stays secret, and putting the secret in a DNS hostname is roughly the opposite of that.
Password1 strikes again
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office reprimanded IT provider Ogi Networks and the Welsh public sector data organization Data Cymru over a 2024 ransomware attack which exposed data on 3,300 people, most of them children. The way in? A test account named “Test2”, created in 2012, never reviewed, and protected with the password “Password1”. The local administrator accounts on three systems also shared a single password for the same twelve years.
There’s nothing exotic here, sadly. Old accounts nobody remembers, passwords that would fall to the first guess of any automated tool, and an outsourcing arrangement where each side assumed the other was handling security. None of it makes for exciting headlines, but these are the things that keep causing very real breaches.
Trezor wallets also implanted
As a follow-up to last week’s coverage of hardware implants in Ledger crypto wallets, Kim Zetter reports that Trezor’s claim of “not a single piece of evidence” that its devices were compromised doesn’t quite line up with reality. Joe Grand found implants in two Trezor wallets, bought through Facebook Marketplace and a TikTok shop, and reported them to Trezor in August.
The Trezor attack is different from the Ledger implant. Instead of adding a radio to spy on the screen, the attackers replaced the main microcontroller with one running modified (open source) firmware. The firmware “randomly” generates one of a dozen recovery phrases the attackers already know. To pass Trezor’s integrity checks, it presents a copy of the legitimate firmware for verification before switching to the malicious code. The takeaway hasn’t changed from last week: buy only directly from the vendor, and if you’re holding enough crypto to make this worth someone’s while, consider whether you can really trust any single device.
NGINX gets more critical bugs
F5 has released out-of-band (meaning outside their normal patch schedule) updates for three critical vulnerabilities in NGINX, the web server and reverse proxy that sits in front of a huge chunk of the Internet, and quite possibly in front of the services on your home lab. The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore has a summary: all three are rated CVSS 9.2, can be triggered remotely without authentication, and can crash worker processes or, under the right conditions, allow remote code execution.
The bugs are CVE-2026-15176, a heap overflow in the “alias” and “rewrite” directives; CVE-2026-97205, a use-after-free in asynchronous file I/O combined with Server Side Includes; and CVE-2026-93479, a heap overflow in the “map” directive. Code execution requires the vulnerable configuration to be in use, and requires bypassing ASLR (the randomization of memory layout which makes exploits harder to aim). Affected versions include NGINX Open Source 1.30.5 and below and 1.31.6 and below, NGINX Plus R33 through R37, and a long list of F5’s NGINX-based products, including the Kubernetes Ingress Controller.
Back in May we covered “nginx-poolslip”, where the suggested mitigation was to avoid unnamed regex capture groups in rewrite rules. The mitigation for the “map” bug this time? Use named captures instead of unnamed captures. If you’ve been putting off cleaning up those “$1” references in your config, now’s the time. For the other two, avoid “alias” inside “location” blocks (and the “$request_filename” variable), or disable AIO or SSI, until you can update.
Linux kernel bugs posted to the wrong list
Normally, security bugs in the Linux kernel are reported privately to the kernel security team, which coordinates a fix before details go public. This is “coordinated disclosure”: the bug and fix are published together, ideally giving admins a chance to patch before attackers can start writing exploits. The Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), on the other hand, is about as public as it gets.
Phoronix reports that Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, seemingly by accident, sent a batch of unpatched vulnerability reports straight to LKML. Greg Kroah-Hartman replied to each report asking about the choice of mailing list, which I can only imagine was done with remarkable restraint. The most serious two are both CVSS 9.0 remote code execution bugs in ksmbd, the kernel’s built-in SMB (Windows file sharing) server: an integer underflow in SMB Direct, and a race condition. The rest include local privilege escalation bugs in the networking code, the VMware graphics driver (an out-of-bounds write), and a stack overflow in search-domain TCP query handling, plus an information leak in the NVMe-over-fabrics target code.
Some of the bugs already have patches being tested or queued for future kernel releases, and those will presumably be expedited now. Most systems don’t run ksmbd (the userspace Samba server is far more common), but if you’ve enabled it on a NAS or a home server, it’s worth disabling until patched kernels land. As Phoronix puts it: “the bug and security reports keep on coming in the AI fueled world.”
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PwnEscape (CVE-2026-99999): a guest VM can attack its host kernel to leak memory, crash it, or gain root. Rated Critical.
AlmaLinux 8, 9, and 10 are affected. Patched kernels are available now. https://almalinux.org/blog/2026-10-16-pwnescape-cve-2026-99999/