https://www.wiz.io/blog/php2shell-php-rce
https://openai.com/index/coordinated-disclosure-of-critical-... (not yet live)
https://thephp.foundation/blog/2026/10/21/todays-php-securit... (not yet live)
The official interim fix for php8.5 [1] could have been published 24h ago, or even 2 weeks ago, without revealing any security details. Specifically once the POC came online. Would have been significantly more useful than these polished blogs.
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but the costs (dev/sre time, missed sales, potential data leaks and hacks) of the way that this was handled is significant.
[1] https://github.com/php/php-src/security/advisories/GHSA-6wmf...
these security companies reported it 2 months ago. it took a month for the php security team to acknowledge it and another month for the php team to develop & release the patch.
if you're going to be upset at anyone it should not be the reporters.
>The official interim fix for php8.5 [1] could have been published 24h ago, or even 2 weeks ago, without revealing any security details.
publishing the fix = publishing the security details.
If I had details on a RCE like this I'd report it but if I got no response for a WEEK I'd be trying other venues.
We don’t know when it went from a “memory safety issue” to “php2shell/RCE”.
Calif’s report is a little light on timelines, but reading between the lines, it seems they took a while to turn this into an actually exploitable vulnerability.
Finally, at least pre-LLM (and maybe a bit outdated now), responsible security disclosure norms is that you usually do wait for vendor (up to 90d) if there’s no signs of active exploitation. Even if it’s a RCE. Actually, especially if it’s a RCE.
The last thing you wanna do is go pinging random non-security PHP contributors or maintainers and have it leak with zero patch. That is truly the worst outcome.
Yes, this is bad, but also, it’s apparently been bad for decades; and it could’ve been much worse.
i highly doubt it. these are pretty big names in the security sector who have plenty of experience reporting high severity vulns.
That said, PHP team handled this poorly. How does letting everyone know so they can "prepare" help anyone at all. It just creates panic.
If you have a bad process, fix the process.
Most users, who don't know the answer to your questions, rely on the distro to figure this out (and often pay good money for it).
this is basically the same as releasing a working exploit.
Say I release a fix. I'm some rando but I go out to the world and say I fixed an issue with php. Use my version instead! Not telling you what I fixed, it's a secret, just trust me.
It will take, with LLM help, attackers a couple hours, tops, to reverse engineer my fix into active exploitation. Meanwhile, I'm some rando so no one's even heard of me, people who do hear don't automatically trust me to install my fix, so very few people have my fix. Meanwhile, the exploit is out there thanks to me and people are getting their sites hacked thanks to me.
That seems like a problem, no?
>I'm some rando so no one's even heard of me
Why do think people need to have heard of you. If you are reporting this issue directly to distro maintainers, security companies, hosting companies, etc first you can help use their names as part of the marketing push to raise awareness.
The PHP maintainers have generated a certain amount of goodwill over their long service, which leads downstream consumers to trust their releases over every other packaging of "PHP the open source codebase".
Nonetheless, there are countless forks of that codebase, and there are other releases than the ones made by the PHP maintainers. Any particular downstream could switch to another source of releases if presented with a compelling enough reason.
Imagine if they had just patched the code and rolled it out with an advisory?! Oh my GOD! Won't someone think of Sam Altman and his huge pile of debt?!
Post AI, Its efficiency pre announcing the exploit to bad actors until the official disclosure.
You can just watch the diff log of every open source project with a small local model, and look for anything that touches buffers, function pointers, or shell integration.
It could be an hour between release of a fix before the exploit starts attacking servers.
Guess what also could happen within an hour? A coordinated Internet wide panic that shuts down all vulnerable servers.
---
We actually have a recent example. OpenAI hack.
An undisclosed vulnerability fix to a image formal lib; packages into debian 12 running in a docker, used by imagemagic, used by discourse running OpenAIs user forum.
Mitigating a bug and developing a proper solution that is maintainable long term and supports future changes being made to the software take different amounts of time to develop.
Whether keeping the update quiet and including it in the next normal release, where there are more trees obscuring the wood that is the security concern, and announcing the bug a short time later once anyone using distro updates or otherwise keeping on top of things have updated, would be safer overall than what has happened today is up for debate. I can think of arguments in both directions.
--------
[1] which does have a slight whiff of AI marketing about it - would a human-found issue, without the option of a big AI company to claim some credit, have been handled differently?
Nor can you just keep it quiet and smuggle it out in a regular release as you suggest. For one thing, changes in important software are be linked to commits and have pull requests, reviews, etc. Changes without these will immediately raise suspicion, as either a malicious change snuck into a release, or as a "quiet" fix to a major vulnerability, completely undermining the purpose of keeping it quiet in the first place. Moreover, major vulnerability fixes cannot be "quiet", because the whole point is to get as many people as possible to upgrade as quickly as possible. If PHP (or whoever) push out a release containing a major security fix, but don't make this clear, then many people will be in no rush to upgrade, and will get pwned.
Sorry, I should have been specific: the concern is that this will happen faster than even the more fastidious admins (or daily or even hourly automated checks) will spot and apply updates.
> nowadays even the rumour
I think a lot fewer people would have paid attention at all without the rumour. Some ne'er-do-wells might have scanned a larger update for security issues otherwise, but I suspect most of those spending tokens on PHP this week would not have bothered had there just been a standard maintenance release that may or may not have included changes for a security issue that may (but probably not) have been so globally significant.
That is, at least in part, why the question of how to manage the release of updates like this is not a settled debate.
> then many people will be in no rush to upgrade, and will get pwned.
The worst case that we may be heading towards is that for any services on public facing infrastructure we might have to automatically apply updates with little or no time to verify, just to try be ahead of the ne'er-do-wells, with even superficial updates not mentioning the changes until a short time after to avoid giving clues to those who will scan for security issues if any such is mentioned (or nothing is mentioned - saying nothing about a security-only update only works if you say nothing about all updates, and you don't want to hold off on security-only updates on a slow moving project that might not have a non-security patch for quite some time).
But they could have accelerated the patch release once the embargo was broken and rumors of a PoC started going around. There was no need to wait 12+h today until the release.
I don’t think this what happened at all, and even less so to specifically call out OpenAI.
The issue was discovered using their model, it was disclosed, and the PHP team took months to address it. Eventually it leaked.
This is a process / people failure that does not involve the people responsible for discovering it.
"we the people deserve to know about vulns on day 0"
oh yeah? and what happens when a 0 day is released?
it's the same ignorance over and over.
Sure, it’s PHP, but plenty of companies or organisations might have some PHP running somewhere; and once you’re in, lateral movement becomes a lot easier.
They literally employ full-time Vulnerability Researchers doing nothing but 0-day discovery and PoC creation 24/7 to add to their horde. Plus contracting with the MIC for their full-time VRs for the occasional project.
See PHP foundation blog post on their timeline
The PHP team knew about it since September 21st.
Amazingly, AWS Linux has not been patched yet.
And they botched this as someone talked. To me this looks like they used this for a PR stunt and aimed for an RCE.
On the other hand, I don't mind AI companies doing this sort of thing, I'm sure a lot of our internet infrastructure could benefit from these sorts of fixes and changes.
This is a pretty constant theme in the infosec industry. The idea is that you want to do the "responsible" thing and let all the major, multi-billion-dollar companies patch first, so you form a secret club. But then, you share a very juicy, gossip-worthy thing with hundreds of people and ask them to sit on it for weeks. And guess what happens: they don't. Having worked for a big tech company, I've been involved on a couple of processes of this sort, and they all suffered leaks.
And rest assured, we'll learn nothing and try the same thing again next month or next year. Because what's the alternative? If you 0-day everyone, you get more hate mail, not less. It's all of sudden about you, not the vulnerable code. Microsoft or Cloudflare calls you irresponsible when asked for a PR statement, industry bloggers bully you, etc.
Ubuntu: https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8948-1
Fedora package status: https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/php/php-fpm/
Edit: was looking Wiz post when citation was from OpenAI
I’d press go too - if something this big was known to some but not all…
We’ll all get through together
August 24, 2026: Wiz Research reports the vulnerabilities to the PHP security team.
September 21, 2026: PHP acknowledges the reports and begins developing a coordinated fix.
AI is gonna make our stuff pretty robust, eventually. The transition phase might hurt a bit.
Here was a PoC: https://jackalsyn.com/posts/php-up-2026.html
But it was withdrawn; now it says that it (CVE-2026-109618) is not an RCE and not even a CVE, apparently an addref call prevents the use-after-free. CVE-2026-109619 is still a memory safe bug, but they have no RCE for that one
Boy, do I hate these PR websites masquerading as vulnerability reports. It's slop all the way down with these companies.
It's like slop for infosec markters
Today's PHP security release, and how we're strengthening security - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50182987 - Oct 2026 (114 comments)
PHP2Shell: AI uncovers critical RCE in PHP - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50180836 - Oct 2026 (146 comments)
PHP session.upload_progress heap UAF (CVE-2026-109618 / -109619) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50176077 - Oct 2026 (61 comments)
Security advisory: Critical remote code execution vulnerabilities, update now - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50172041 - Oct 2026 (631 comments)
Tell HN: 2x PHP RCE CVEs with CVSS 10.0 Incoming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50167754 - Oct 2026 (60 comments)
Come to think of it, I believe it would actually be a good idea to lobby for exactly that. Memory safety issues have been a plague in IT for far too long.
Not in general no, but it is for PHP. If you cared about a 2x overhead why are you using a language with 10x overhead (conservatively)?
From what I can see, this causes a crash only, and isn't weaponisable. It's a use-after-free, but the reclaim window is zero by construction.
It's going to be pretty bad if we all panic to get the latest PHP up, and all confidently roll out our updated websites, just for them to still be vulnerable to something serious anyhow.
Just point Claude at your PHP and ask it to rewrite it in Rust. I know it seemed crazy when Bun did it (and it probably was), but it actually works now. (And please try it before you say "that's what people said 6 months ago" or whatever.)
how does Docker not yet have a new, official PHP image ready, given such a big heads up? https://hub.docker.com/_/php Nuts this wasn't ready to flip on at :00 (or even earlier given the PoC exploit and even the official PHP fixes were out well before). Now we are 52 minutes past due. (posting comment again, because the other thread i posted in was marked as dupe.)
Edit: Seems like GitHub has issues with merging PRs: https://github.com/docker-library/official-images/pull/22541
https://github.com/docker-library/official-images/pull/22544
Maybe the guy that has to click OK is asleep?
https://github.com/docker-library/faq#an-images-source-chang...
https://hub.docker.com/_/php/tags
EDIT: 25min later, nope.
https://hub.docker.com/layers/library/php/8.5.12-fpm/images/...
The average phpBB or Wordpress, even if it's behind cloudflare, probably has a direct IPv4 that's not disabled.
This is a storm, but hopefully quick to blow over with a panic frency of apt update or docker build.
The immediate exposure is faar worse here though, since its by design internet facing code.
A college enabled logging on their server as soon as they saw the news, and got dozens of attempted requests against index.php.
Newest: 5.6.40-104 which has the CVE fixes.
https://github.com/php/php-src/security/advisories/GHSA-w8hw...
https://github.com/php/php-src/security/advisories/GHSA-6wmf...
Well off to a good start here.
Exceptions aren't great for that either, but languages that feature them at least have the tooling and support features to make them work. C has no destructors or anything to handle exception unwinding cleanly. Scheme has call/cc, but scheme has a big runtime and garbage collector to deal with the fallout.
Let the branch predictor do its job and implement error checking properly, I say. If performance matters so much that you worry about pipeline flushes and icache thrashing, surely you wouldn't be using PHP anyway.
setjmp, longjmp and gets are 3 function I would absolutely ban in any C codebase I would be responsible for. Maybe strncpy too. and strtok. C is fun.
longjmp is very uncommon, I don't recall seeing any high-quality C codebase using it, and if you want exceptions, you should pick a different language because longjmp doesn't really give you comparable semantics. It's basically saying "ok, computer, f--k my s--t up".
The fact that OOM conditions are an enduring source of exploitable vulnerabilities in PHP really should give everyone a pause. Like, that's not a thing in any sane project.
There's no automatic cleanup of anything, no built-in way to even register things for manual cleanup, and it doesn't even consistently save/restore the values of your local variables. A local variable that was mutated between the setjmp and longjmp may end up with the old value or the new value depending on where the compiler decided to store it. The documentation does mention this and says that you need to use the volatile keyword to avoid it, but in typical C fashion there's nothing to enforce this, it's just up to the programmer to remember it.
It is extremely uncommon in C codebases because it is extremely dangerous. It makes hazards like pointer arithmetic and manually-terminated strings look like a walk in the park by comparison.
> Who is at risk: all PHP installations serving web requests, including PHP-FPM, Apache with mod_php, php-cgi, FrankenPHP and LiteSpeed.
But there were two vulns - only the second required the two requests.
> This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository.
Glorious. Today of all days it would genuinely give me pause for caution.
edit: yeah, really not feeling that: https://github.com/php/php-src/compare/php-8.2.34..php-8.2.3...
Hopefully just a mistake? But looks like a botched release at the least
Is it perhaps a bit misleading, and only means that there's no branch containing that commit?
GitHub uses this metaphor, and, as another commenter already aptly described, it could be nothing more than a fancy name for namespaced branches, on the server side.
On the client side, "forks" are usually different repository clones with different remotes and a "coincidentally" shared history.
But you can also map forked repos to multiple remotes of the same repository for example, instead of folders.
Assuming that forks would live in separate clones/blobs on the server is not really based on anything, so I think the warning is a good middle ground between explaining what forks are and how they handle them, and giving actionable advice.
It's also better suited for PR:
"Fork me on GitHub"
vs
"Branch and push your own clone on GitHub, using our shared blob optimizations".
I think the warning is clear and there's nothing misleading about it, but others have already pointed this out and git can be tricky.
It's so good at providing the right level of abstraction to everyone though, it seems!
Similarly, GitHub invented the term "Pull Request" (aka PR, lol).
Not a git-owned term.
But "merge request" isn't a Git primitive either!
And, with Forks and Pull Requesrs, GitHub made a particular workflow in Git approachable to anyone!
I love GitLab, but people get confused by Merges, myself included, so the GH-enabled workflow of favoring ff-only merges, without merge commits, with quadi-linear history, became the norm and helped Git succceed!
But I also appreciate being able to do all kinds of different workflows.
So PRs were positive-sum PR at the time, I'd say. When they became popular, I was still taught Subversion and CVS at uni, alongside Git as "the new thing". Ar that time, many people considered the older systems simpler, and pondered SVN as the most reasonable middle ground between CVS and the decentralized concept of Git!
On github forks are part of the same physical repository. You could imagine that each logical repository is just a namespace for branches and tags, backed by the same physical repository.
I do consider the warning a bug if github, it should check both tags and branches for commits which are to be considered part of a logical repository.
If only we could come up with a way to manage memory automatically. Alas, one can only dream.
In some environments OOM is a trappable exception, so it's possible that incorrectly authored code would trap the OOM and 'recover' with partially initialized data sitting on the heap. Hopefully it's a memory-safe language so that partially initialized data isn't RCE...
# docker pull matomo:latest
latest: Pulling from library/matomo
Digest: sha256:6e63589d31ec653f78e029084d21488640fdbbd9a42c96c872098f42c8678a02
Status: Image is up to date for matomo:latest
docker.io/library/matomo:latest
# docker run --rm matomo:latest php --version
PHP 8.4.26 (cli) (built: Oct 21 2026 00:31:19) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Built by https://github.com/docker-library/php
Zend Engine v4.4.26, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v8.4.26, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies
I'm currently waiting for a new docker image for another project, and their maintainer noticed the old PHP versions in the freshly built images and is still waiting or working on releasing a new container build.
"Let's use this packaging some rando on the Internet built" is a strategy that is exactly as good as it seems, but that's the Docker ecosystem for you.
Packagers who actually understand the software put in good work to package that software in small and well maintained packages. Use them instead!
FROM debian:...
RUN apt install php ...
$ docker pull wordpress:fpm && docker image inspect wordpress:fpm --format '{{.Created}}' && docker run --rm wordpress:fpm php --version
fpm: Pulling from library/wordpress
Digest: sha256:c6d271a445510a3e08cfcc487750ac014f4464165ad6df6356da04680be8e907
Status: Image is up to date for wordpress:fpm
docker.io/library/wordpress:fpm
2026-10-21T01:27:06.695704995Z
PHP 8.3.35 (cli) (built: Oct 21 2026 00:33:17) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.3.35, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v8.3.35, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies
Some systems and services still only allow for one owner though (I'm not going to name names), which can be a big problem when MFA is mandated. From what the poster I responded to said, I'd be very surprised if that were the case for them though - just slightly daft policy.
I've found that to be incredibly true in my career.
And if the answer is no, well, then Bob just got Hotel California'd and can check out but can never leave.
Help Bob; help yourself.
Implemented a lot of “just in case” policies after that, which seemed obvious but oh well.
Not everything needs hyper security. Heck, I've given AI access to spend money on websites and my only restriction is that the websites limit the daily spend(website side... Although I guess a rogue AI could have changed it... )
https://codeberg.org/oerdnj/deb.sury.org/issues/145#issuecom...
https://launchpad.net/~ondrej/+archive/ubuntu/php/+builds?bu...
Going to migrate the box to Debian in-place. (Or Gentoo, the way things are currently going.)
I realised that my linode and ovh vm's point at local mirrors not direct to ubuntu, I guess that's why the delay
Edit: Linode just updated its mirror.
It would not be easy (or reasonable) to take a public build like that private to build a 'secret' image version, and I'm not sure GitHub even has the capability to do that. I would not trust a build pushed to Docker Hub separate from the established / public / auditable process they have in place.
All dependent (official) images need to go through the same process, so that makes it fairly problematic, and I think Docker needs to take a look at it for the future.
It should definitely have a 'high impact' workflow that bypasses some of those manual steps.
they are wanting people to pay for the hardened version.
Disclosure: I'm a PHP core team member and also contributed some code to PIE.
Looks like we need to be patient:
> Why is this not merged yet?
> I'm not a maintainer and can not merge this. Please wait until a maintainer has come around to look into this.
> This is merged, but I cannot find the image?
> After this PR has been merged, more steps are to be taken, including an upstream merge on docker-library/official-images and subsequent image builds. For a full description of the timeline, please refer to docker-library/faq#an-images-source-changed-in-git-now-what.
It seemed to be helpful for others too so I packaged it up, should work on most Nginx / Certbot servers. hopefully its useful: https://github.com/Indemnity83/popcorn
awake2death or something
They'll of course install a backdoor and patch the exploit so others can't come in. They won't deface the website, so there won't be signs.
> Exploit portability and reliability depend on the PHP build, extensions, frontend behavior and allocator layout.
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/php8.3/8.3.6-0ubuntu0.2...
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/php8.1/8.1.2-1ubuntu2.2...
but nothing shipped yet by their mirrors, unlike debian.
This adds Ondřej Surý's PPA to your system so you can upgrade the packages.
Most of docker is like this. Images provided by volunteers, and not related to the project. Using docker images you don't maintain yourself, and at least don't upgrade yourself, is not the best recipe for security.
(It's pretty trivial to build your own)
This is false. The Docker Official Images team (i.e. the folks with write access to the docker-library/* organization) are Docker employees.
Honestly I don't even understand why so many docker images prefer to build software from sources, rather than just installing them from debian repositories.
Because Debian uses older relases and a lot of custom patches. One example: Nodejs still doesn't have Typescript support in the Debian packages.
Distribution packages vs. official build from source has both pros and cons.
Unclear why Ubuntu is lagging.
They gave away CDs 20 years ago for free. Cooool.
Fedora is best for desktop.
Debian for servers that never need updates (but I even use Fedora for server now adays)
Debian on the desktop is the best computer decision I ever made
https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2026/10/21/critical-...
It feels like many times PRs could just be that.
It says pecl.php.net recovered but downloading source for extensions ends up with 504 most of the time.
The description of the vurnurability "Several multipart parsing problems" makes it sound like it is?
blog that was helpful to me: https://www.vincentschmalbach.com/cve-2026-109618-and-cve-20...
Now are available in the php-src github
5.6.40-104+0~20261021.134+debian12~1.gbp7401dd
7.4.33-31+0~20261021.121+debian12~1.gbpe9c428
But yeah, with AI agents, I don't really understand the purpose anymore. Legacy WordPress or laravel sites?
Websites depending on an older framework like Zend Framework or libraries like Doctrine 1 do not have a clear upgrade path and are stuck at php5 or have to basically start from scratch. php5 to the latest php8 is just a jump too big.
I thought the real lesson was "assume your web server is compromised if you use php, and try to make sure php doesn't touch anything too critical"
At that point I would not need a backend.
I've also published the built images from them to GitHub Registry, but of course it's best to inspect any public repo/docker image before using them blindly.
What I meant was: don't trust prebuilt images from a stranger, including mine. I've provided them just as a convenience, the Dockerfiles and patches can be easily looked-through, and building them yourself is the safer option if you need these docker images.
Though quite possibly I'm missing something ;)
---------------
edit: as I was typing the index was updated. So, as far as I can tell only just now (18:20 UTC) was it available for updating!
https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=php8.2&suite=...
What everyone is looking for.
if (ZEND_HAS_OOM()) {
goto oom_nodeset;
}
and not the github mirror?
There are already functional exploit scripts on GitHub, you can target any Wordpress site right now.
> PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35 fix two critical vulnerabilities that can allow unauthenticated remote code execution. All PHP users are strongly encouraged to update immediately.
Earlier versions are not fixed by PHP official and need vendor patching where available
GLM 5.3 just wrote it to audit all my php sites. I hope it is useful to you
"I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say 'Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that.' I’ll just restart Apache every 10 requests." -Rasmus Lerdorf
Maybe just CYA.
I'm 90% sure CGI can't be exploited this way in default configuration with ASLR and 99% sure if PHP is configured with memory_limit=-1
That said, don't be an idiot and switch to CGI instead of patching. I'm like one of three guys running PHP in CGI mode and I'm vaguely satisfied I have the most resistant configuration.
The reason, BTW, I run PHP in CGI mode is so I can (moral equivalent of) suexec to a locked-down sandboxed environment that limits exploit blast radius. I could do the same with fcgi daemon, but the suexec is stateless, and roundcube doesn't need the performance.
In general, anything stateful or long-lived is just one more thing that can go wrong. One reason why the trend of turning everything into a persistent daemon drives me nuts.
made it in time hopefully
EDIT: looks like there are backports though
Is this even reachable on Linux due to overcommit? Maybe by attempting a single extremely large allocation?
By simply searching for websites that used local includes to load other pages, you could get RCE.
At this point, running webapps in JS workers/sandboxes sounds like a good idea. Vendors take care of patching.
The thing that's annoyed me the most is the speculation and misinformation, filling in the gaps. Folks looked into the php-src and figured out one of the vulnerabilities, starting saying you should disable certain php settings and then core PHP developers on obscure mailing lists hinting this isn't enough.
Given how inexpensive it is for agents to scan popular OSS projects, disclosure needs to be more discrete and you cannot publish fixes to OSS before disclosure. People will be and are watching for this kind of thing already.
Some web-services are back up again here in central Europe, but some are not, which is very annoying. Kind of surprising to see how much PHP is actually used. Hate it or love it, PHP really is very important still - lots of the web depends on it.
Hehe. That's funny.
I can imagine a truce, either on machines ('ok, you take that one') or on cores ('16/8, deal?')
Infiltrate vulnerable PHP sites. Install backdoor(s). Secure root access. Patch PHP to lock out script kiddies. Let it sit dormant until you need to launch attack
I would not recommend using PHP. The PHP team keeps breaking backward compatibility and trying to introduce new features instead of focusing on fixing bugs and hardening the compiler.
docker pull wordpress:fpm && docker image inspect wordpress:fpm --format '{{.Created}}' && docker run --rm wordpress:fpm php --version
So far, no dice.
I have not seen confirmation Cloudflare is doing anything except playing whack a mole with certain request patterns. PHP Core Devs have been clear you need to upgrade. If this is true, it's disgustingly opportunistic that Cloudflare is using this critical security time to lie to people that they are safe.
Anyone from Cloudflare want to speak to this?
These were rolled out before the exploit became public.
I would wouldn't describe that as damning.
Why is word circulating that you can just sign up for Cloudflare and be 100% protected from this? They are burying the leed and trying to get new customers, and it's working.
The old way of doing things like putting old unpatched stuff behind firewalls is pretty much a dead pattern today.
Maybe Hetzner know a company that can help out with extra computer resource...? /s
Useless. My fault for paying peanuts
(Not even joking, if you're going to go hog go whole-hog.)
I would recommend running this binary as a user that has no access to any files, it can just proxy traffic through a port. I will put that in the README.
Honestly, and not to be harsh, but doing absolutely nothing is better than what you've done here.
Not only is this proxy unlikely to actually protect against the issues, but this code almost certainly has its own, equally bad security vulnerabilities. A 30 second check with Opus 5.5 found at least one heap overflow, multiple memory leaks, and a number of bugs that shows that it doesn't even succeed at doing what it claims. I appreciate that you're trying to help, but there are better tools for the approach that you're going for here, and injecting noise with AI slop that isn't even reviewed at a basic level is causing noise, confusion, and potential harm in an already urgent, tense situation.
https://github.com/Qbix/proxy/blob/main/src/sanitize.c#L41 https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/main/SAPI.c#L162
The article linked from your own README (https://sansec.io/research/php2shell) has a better partial mitigation in existing, battle-tested reverse proxies. Even still, as that article says, everything here is a partial mitigation. The description of the issues in your project's README is an inaccurate understatement of the severity of the issues. "CVE-2026-109618 — heap use-after-free in the session.upload_progress handler" is an incomplete understatement of the issue, the session.upload_progress handler is only one of a number of potential exploitation paths. https://github.com/php/php-src/security/advisories/GHSA-w8hw... has some hints at other paths, of which there are many.
From an LLM, and quickly validated by me, a heap overflow, likely an RCE.
> src/http.c:101-116 and src/util.c:9
Attacker supplied value in strtoul, the size-limit checks are unsigned addition that can wrap, and you can follow the chain from there.
> or better yet submit a request.
This project is not deserving of fixing, it should just be deleted and direct people to more serious documentation of fixes and mitigations. This code is clearly AI-generated slop, it is not my responsibility to fix your project.
> I could understand if you actually at least clicked and looked at the repository, and read what it’s about. But you chose to simply write generic text without looking at anything. You want to discourage people from protecting their servers, in order to feel good about yourself. What amount of effort have you put into understanding what you’re even talking about?
Every accusation is an admission.
It's free and MIT licensed, open source and it is currently the only alternative to patching your PHP. The "profit" is for people who don't get PWNED today!!!
Many people can't patch your PHP. If you can't be bothered to even look at the repo, you may want to sit this one out.
UPDATE: Just going to ship a Linux binary for now, that's where most hosting is. Almost no one hosts from a MacOS or Windows machine. The Cosmo binary was overkill here.
1. session.upload_progress.enabled = Off, in php.ini and as php_admin_flag in every FPM pool, so per-directory config can't turn it back on. It's one of the two confirmed consumers in GHSA-6wmf, and the validated FPM path depends on it. Almost nobody uses it, and the advisory suggests leaving it off even after patching.
2. Refuse multipart request bodies at the web server, before PHP parses them. All of the GHSA-w8hw out-of-memory strategies go through multipart parsing. On Apache it's a rewrite rule matching a Content-Type of multipart/form-data that returns 403. On Caddy it's a header matcher that responds 403. The cost: every browser upload breaks (media library, plugin zips, importers). Check your public forms first.
3. Check your SAPI. Both bugs have confirmed RCE against mod_php. FPM is narrower: the validated path needs upload_progress, and the early INI consumer only applies if your front end sends PHP_VALUE/PHP_ADMIN_VALUE. To check, grep your Apache, nginx and Caddy configs for it, and run apache2ctl -M | grep php.
4. pm.max_requests = 1 in the pools. A worker serves one request and exits, which breaks the stale-state chain: the "producer" and "consumer" requests must land on the same worker. It costs a fork per request.
5. Lower max_input_nesting_level and post_max_size, per the advisory.
6. Housekeeping that should already be done: no .php served from uploads directories, and remove any stray phpinfo.php. Scanners request it constantly, and it tells an attacker your exact build.
The fact is you had no idea how useful or dangerous your advice was. PHP maintainers said to shut it down, how many people followed your advice instead? Did it work or just leave them vulnerable? Do you know?
Because you're heavily implying that the people who knew about the details of the vulnerability were panicking and thank god we had you with an LLM
Then your own comment would not be such low effort and useless human slop.
Do you agree or disagree with the comment's claims? Did YOU verify anything? Let's all hear you fact check and proofread and reword what it said so it matches your standards, instead of just listening to you bitch and complain without offering any useful information.
Or do you not actually know anything about PHP administration, programming, and security, so you're only capable of information-free drive-by anti-ai posts, without any other useful content or corrections?
Ball's in your court.
That 70% of the internet still uses it is shocking to me. These organizations deserve to get burned badly. Let this incident be a warning to all of them!
PHP is a memory-safe language. This vulnerability is a memory safety bug in the VM, which does happen from time to time. It happens with V8 (JS), Java, C#.
https://blog.okturtles.org/2024/10/convert-wordpress-to-stat...
Plus, wordpress updating isn't going to help you upgrade php.
1. Hey LLM, turn this binary into source code.
2. Hey LLM, see any glaring security issues with this source code?
They actually aren't. Most of the claimed cases of "recompilation" are just an emulator packaged into the same binary as the game so you can't tell it's an emulator, or are for projects that already had their source code available (in which case "porting" to WASM is trivial because all of the hard work is done by the people who write your-language-to-WASM compilers, and you just need to do a little bit of work to adjust your toolchain to use it). Everyone just takes slopshit at face value and shares clickbait without actually checking any of the work done. It's infuriating how empowering this software is for liars, honestly.
This hurts because my resume has laravel and WordPress on it. I built sooo many sites/apps on it.
With AI agents, I just can't imagine using PHP anymore unless I'm patching legacy stuff.
I loved laravel too... WordPress, love hate.
Yeah it sucks, but the alternative could be worse.