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Source · advisory · primary · captured

Critical Vulnerabilities in PHP Require Immediate Patching

US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) · https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2026/10/21/critical-vulnerabilities-php-require-immediate-patching · published 2026-10-21 · added by collector-gov · slug cisa-alert-php-20261021

CISA Alert, Release Date October 21, 2026. Names CVE-2026-109618/109619 'php2shell'. 'Organizations that cannot update immediately, or that continue to use PHP 8.1 or earlier unsupported versions, should take PHP-based systems offline until they can be patched or updated.' CISA 'has not observed exploitation ... as of the time of publication'. Not in KEV as of catalog 2026.10.21.

A web application firewall may provide some protection unt…CISA has not observed exploitation; neither CVE is in the …Organisations that cannot update immediately, or that run …As of 14:40 UTC on 25 October, no named organisation has s…2026-10-21: CISA alert 'Critical Vulnerabilities in PHP Re…CISA

What it says, as the collector read it

CISA Alert: Critical Vulnerabilities in PHP Require Immediate Patching

  • URL: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2026/10/21/critical-vulnerabilities-php-require-immediate-patching. "Release Date October 21, 2026" (no time given).
  • Captured 2026-10-22T08:13:53Z with Playwright. Plain curl to www.cisa.gov returns 403 (Akamai), but the headless browser gets 200. The CISA home page (cisa-home) lists it at the top as "OCT 21, 2026 ALERT".
  • Exact advice, verbatim:
  • "CISA strongly urges organizations to immediately patch the recently disclosed critical vulnerabilities in PHP, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619."
  • "Organizations should immediately update to PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, or 8.2.35"
  • "Identify and inventory systems running any version of PHP across your organization."
  • "Apply the patch immediately, prioritizing internet-facing systems."
  • "Organizations that cannot update immediately, or that continue to use PHP 8.1 or earlier unsupported versions, should take PHP-based systems offline until they can be patched or updated."
  • "A web application firewall may provide some protection until systems are updated or patched."
  • "Monitor for suspicious activity, including PHP worker processes launching shells or downloading tools."
  • Exploitation: "While CISA has not observed exploitation of these vulnerabilities as of the time of publication".
  • The CISA offline advice is the most absolute ("should take ... offline"), and it explicitly covers EOL 8.1 and older. No emergency directive found (see cisa-kev-json).

Claims that cite it

ClaimWho says itStatusFact-checkPrimarySources
A web application firewall may provide some protection until systems are patched
Swiss BACS: 'Even a web application firewall alone is not sufficient.' Cloudflare says its rules blocked the traffic it saw and that attackers mutated payloads to get past them.
fact timeline →		CISAdisputedA6 Established3/3CISA BACS Cloudflare
CISA has not observed exploitation; neither CVE is in the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
Catalog version 2026.10.21 fetched 2026-10-22T08:15Z, 1,754 entries. A point-in-time negative finding.
fact timeline →		CISAconfirmedA6 Established3/3CISA CISA CVE record
Organisations that cannot update immediately, or that run PHP 8.1 or older, should take PHP-based systems offline fact timeline →CISAconfirmedA6 Established1/1CISA
As of 14:40 UTC on 25 October, no named organisation has said it was compromised through php2shell. Exploitation attempts are widely reported, in millions; Hadrian reports exploitation at scale and Patchstack received reports of incidents from hosting partners, neither naming a victim, and Patchstack's own telemetry showed only probing. Sophos withdrew an earlier success claim: its data showed scanning and a few failed attempts.
A time-bounded absence, not a confirmed fact: it can only be true as of the last check, and it will change. Changed from "confirmed" on 22 October at the editor's request. Refreshed by the journalist on 24 October against the evidence vault at 1f38e70921b2: the named cases (GMO, ČVUT, DMM, Valtec) are now in the vault, and none of them states php2shell as the cause (Valtec retracted). The PHP Foundation's executive director: "to our knowledge, there has been no successful attempt at remote code execution" (The Verge). Luxembourg: no institution has announced an intrusion (Paperjam). Patchstack: incidents reported to it by hosting partners (Recorded Future) against "only probing attacks, with no hard evidence of breaches yet" in its own telemetry (PCMag); on the board for the fact-check desk. An anonymous startup owner's claim of stolen source code (Fortune) is unnamed and not attributed to the flaw. Sophos, via Cyber Security News: a correction at 21:21 UTC on 22 October withdrew an earlier success claim; scanning and a small number of failed attempts, a Mirai-derived payload blocked. American Banker, 23 October: no US bank or credit union has publicly reported a compromise. Refreshed on 24 October at 16:05 UTC against the vault at 8c16a64a7cf6 (382 sources): no new source names an organisation compromised through php2shell; Die Presse (12:03 on 23 October) knows of no successful attack in Austria, and RainForest's honeypot (VOIX) records attempts only. Refreshed again on 25 October at 09:35 UTC (09:35 GMT: the UK clocks went back at 01:00 UTC that day; an earlier version of this note said 10:35 BST, which was wrong) against the vault at 87795d121200 (418 sources): still no new source names an organisation compromised through php2shell; Turkey's Presidency Cybersecurity Directorate says the e-Devlet portal had no problem. Refreshed on 26 October against the vault at 94352a55fbaa (454 sources, latest capture 14:40 UTC on 25 October): 16 new claims reviewed, still no new source names an organisation compromised through php2shell; La Razón (23 October) knows of no successful execution.
fact timeline →		this site, from every captured source in the evidence vault (454 sources, head 94352a55fbaa), as of its latest capture at 14:40 UTC on 25 OctoberreportedA4 Corroborated6/24CISA CISA Huntress Amazon SecurityWeek SecurityWeek Recorded Future Imperva Threat Research Weird Gloop Paperjam PCMag IT Social Lupa.cz Yahoo! News Japan 産経ニュース INTERNET Watch The Verge Cyber Security News American Banker The Next Web Die Presse voix Haber.com La Razón

Events that cite it

WhenEventTime is
2026-10-21CISA alert 'Critical Vulnerabilities in PHP Require Immediate Patching': take systems offline if you cannot update. NSA press release 'PHP2Shell'. UK NCSC alert. CCCS AL26-026. CERT-FR ALE-014. ACN AL07/261021. Cloudflare, Wiz, Calif, the PHP Foundation and Daubois publish their accounts.stated

Agency rows from this source

Exploitation signals from this source

The bytes

capture 20261022T081353Z · HTTP 200 · https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2026/10/21/critical-vulnerabilities-php-require-immediate-patching
  • headers.json 30fb6764c792111ac226e0fb1ca4f574f5e2faadfc10d2150ae9dfa35ea0858d 2,825 bytes
  • page.html be6b410fc0da16de2c1b96dc3132a195632d636467ab7c859c343494fa7accfa 53,868 bytes
  • provenance.json ea18f4dbc502d3c87b5d9a6c83d49ff128544ad074140c502f37abff350d9f8a 1,110 bytes
  • rendered.html 0e3e08492a52d48e8ccb18f836df984af4f15f251f6089697676b540458b3371 78,116 bytes
  • screenshot.png 2724e9107ccae45a888b3531fdc43373b154be3eeadb78841791dcb6a60a34c1 384,239 bytes
  • text.txt 7bf853872a073bde9c2d71a41fbf9bfd3cda8147c278ab15426ebc9c8e627a9f 3,223 bytes

The captured files are held privately in the evidence vault and are not republished; the hashes above are what the vault recorded at capture time. Every source →