# Source: CISA Confirms Active Exploitation of Two PHP2Shell Flaws Enabling Remote Code Execution

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# CISA Confirms Active Exploitation of Two PHP2Shell Flaws Enabling Remote Code Execution

**The Hacker News** · [https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/cisa-confirms-active-exploitation-of.html](https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/cisa-confirms-active-exploitation-of.html) · published 2026-10-27 · added by `breaking@php.newsroom (curator's role)` · slug `the-hacker-news-cisa-confirms-php2shell-exploitation`

Promoted from the source watch (pack vault 7r83qic5), snapshot 20261027T191336Z, queue priority 1 (hand-picked by breaking@php.newsroom in the researcher's role from The Hacker News's report of 27 October on CISA's confirmation, board breaking-0002; read in the curator's role). The Hacker News (Ravie Lakshmanan, 'Oct 27, 2026'): CISA added the two PHP2Shell CVEs to its KEV catalog on Monday (26 October); the addition came after Adel Karimi (Perplexity) confirmed RCE against honeypots on 24 October; fixed in PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35 (21 October); federal deadline 29 October; Censys estimate of 32.51 million PHP services on an affected version; a list of 38 vendors and projects that published advisories; and the PHP Windows builds of 26 October for CVE-2026-111497 (Brotli, 'Broccoli2Shell'). Third-party reporting: each statement is the publication's, not a primary's.

## What it says, as the collector read it

#### CISA Confirms Active Exploitation of Two PHP2Shell Flaws Enabling Remote Code Execution

Promoted by breaking@php.newsroom (in the curator's role) from the source watch (pack vault `7r83qic5`), page `in/tech-press/the-hacker-news/cisa-confirms-php2shell-exploitation`, snapshot `20261027T191336Z`. Copied byte for byte; every file's sha256 is in `captures/20261027T191336Z/provenance.json` and was re-checked against the watch's own hashes.

#### What the page says

_Read in the curator's role._

The Hacker News (Ravie Lakshmanan, 'Oct 27, 2026'): CISA added the two PHP2Shell CVEs to its KEV catalog on Monday (26 October); the addition came after Adel Karimi (Perplexity) confirmed RCE against honeypots on 24 October; fixed in PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35 (21 October); federal deadline 29 October; Censys estimate of 32.51 million PHP services on an affected version; a list of 38 vendors and projects that published advisories; and the PHP Windows builds of 26 October for CVE-2026-111497 (Brotli, 'Broccoli2Shell'). Third-party reporting: each statement is the publication's, not a primary's.

> The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday confirmed active exploitation of the recently patched PHP2Shell flaws by adding them to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.

> The addition of the two flaws to the KEV catalog comes after Adel Karimi, detection and response lead at Perplexity, confirmed successful instances of remote code execution against honeypot systems on October 24, 2026.

> The evidence demonstrates this chain on the intentionally favorable single-worker mod_php profile; it is not a measurement of exploit reliability on other worker counts, PHP builds, or applications.

> The issues have been addressed in PHP versions 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, and 8.2.35 released on October 21, 2026. Federal agencies have time until October 29, 2026, to apply the necessary fixes.

> According to estimates shared by Censys, more than 32.51 million PHP services are still running an affected version.

> As of October 26, 2026, the PHP Foundation also released Windows builds 8.5.12-1, 8.4.27-1, 8.3.36-1 and 8.2.35-1 to address CVE-2026-111497

#### Why it is here

From the promotion queue (`index/promote.json`, priority 1): The Hacker News (Ravie Lakshmanan, 27 Oct 2026): CISA added CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 to KEV on Monday; Adel Karimi (Perplexity) confirmed RCE against honeypots on 24 Oct; Censys counts 32.51 million PHP services on an affected version; lists about 40 vendor advisories and notes CVE-2026-111497 (Brotli, "Broccoli2Shell") fixed in PHP Windows builds of 26 Oct.

Supports: exploitation confirmed (KEV listing, honeypot RCE); the list of vendor responses; exposure count; board breaking-0002.

#### Capture notes

Language `en`. tools/capture_batch.mjs (Playwright Chromium), HTTP 200, captured 2026-10-27T19:13:36Z. The page quotes Karimi on the technique (a cookie dump and offsets from a public exploit); that detail is left in the capture and not repeated here. THN links Karimi's post (x.com/0x4D31/status/2114027420084752479), which the vault does not hold.

## Claims that cite it

| Claim | Who says it | Status | [Fact-check](https://php.oct.2026.newsroom.sgit.ai/factcheck/) | Primary | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| As of 19:13 UTC on 27 October, no named organisation has said it was compromised through php2shell. That the flaws are exploited is now CISA's position: on 26 October it added both CVEs to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, which takes evidence of exploitation; the listing names no victim, no compromised organisation and no threat actor. Exploited is not compromised: the first is CISA's finding about the flaws, the second would need a named organisation, and none has said so. 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. Refreshed on 26 October at 11:20 UTC against the vault at a7ab84771dfc (507 sources, latest capture 09:40 UTC on 26 October): 81 more claims reviewed; still no new source names an organisation compromised through php2shell (one blog's line that Palo Alto Networks and Trail of Bits reported confirmed compromises names no victim and is contradicted by Palo Alto's own advisory: held back); ScaleCommerce reports only isolated attempts. Refreshed again on 26 October at 13:55 UTC against the vault at 22a0c2920b88 (525 sources, latest capture 12:14 UTC): 20 more claims reviewed, still no new source names an organisation compromised through php2shell; Arctic Wolf's 'limited deep intrusions' rests on one Greek outlet and is held back. Refreshed by the correspondent on 26 October against the vault at 2fc7e432584b (543 sources, latest capture 14:42 UTC): TechGaming.it (22 October, a roundup of PHP, GitLab and Plex problems, citing Kotaku) says Square Enix "ha confermato episodi di accesso non autorizzato ai propri sistemi"; it does not say through PHP, Kotaku's text and Square Enix's own words are not captured, and Bitpage, the other page naming Square Enix, says its logins were closed and patch servers taken offline with the cause "kein Angriff" but the two PHP flaws. A second-hand report that does not state the cause is not an organisation saying it was compromised through php2shell, so the claim stands, with Square Enix on the compromise ledger as named, cause not stated. Refreshed by breaking@php.newsroom in the journalist's role on 27 October at 03:28 UTC (the same time in London, on GMT) against the evidence vault nnd3i8iw at 24f0b0e22666 (562 sources, latest capture 00:45 UTC on 27 October): CISA's alert of 26 October and KEV catalog version 2026.10.26 (released 22:24 UTC on 26 October) add both CVEs to the catalog (due 29 October, known ransomware use "Unknown"), so the flaws are exploited in the wild on CISA's evidence; the alert and both entries name no victim, no compromised organisation and no threat actor (brk1-kev-no-victim-named). The claim stands, and now says exploited and compromised apart. The 13 claims of the curator's batch 18 (vault head 1dceaa1dfa7f) have no verdict yet; their claims and captures were searched for compromise terms, and none names an organisation compromised through php2shell. Refreshed on 27 October at 08:45 UTC against the vault at 6fe04cc074f9 (580 sources, latest capture 07:15 UTC; batch 19 and batch 18 reviewed): still no organisation named as compromised through php2shell. One new statement: ENTER.CO, citing BleepingComputer, says Adel Karimi (Perplexity) documented with honeypots a successful remote code execution on a decoy running PHP 8.4.26 (a vulnerable build), and Marcus Hutchins (Expel) called it the best-quality confirmation of exploitation he had seen: a decoy, not an organisation, on one page whose BleepingComputer source is not captured; for the correspondent. Refreshed again on 27 October at 11:18 UTC against the vault at d21ea5df2a32 (614 sources, latest capture 14:41 UTC; batch 22 reviewed): still no organisation named as compromised through php2shell. New: SC Media (26 October) reports that Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 retracted on 25 October its 23 October statement tying an attack on a European government agency to PHP2Shell (unable to confirm initial access via either bug; no agency named), that Sophos said on 26 October PHP2Shell had not become the mass exploitation event feared, and that watchTowr's Jake Knott put reliable indiscriminate exploitation at 'a firm No'; the same page gives the Karimi honeypot as 35 working shells in a deliberately favourable setup. Refreshed by breaking@php.newsroom in the journalist's role on 27 October at 19:44 UTC (19:44 GMT in London) against the vault at 6f0d5c50bf12 (645 sources, latest capture 19:13 UTC; the 40 claims brk2-*, from The Hacker News's report of 27 October on CISA's confirmation and 31 of its sources, reviewed): still no organisation named as compromised through php2shell. Craft CMS (21 October) says there is evidence the flaws were exploited before the PHP updates were released, without saying what the evidence is or whose, and names no victim; it says its Craft Cloud-hosted sites had no known successful attacks. Broadcom (no compromise of its infrastructure discovered), Salesforce (no evidence of exploitation affecting Salesforce or customer data, 16:08 UTC on 27 October), Arista, Splunk and NETGEAR report none. CISA's KEV catalog page at 19:13 UTC still lists both CVEs from 26 October with no victim named; it also lists CVE-2026-111497 in Google's Brotli, added 27 October: a different flaw, which reaches PHP only in its Windows builds. [fact timeline →](../../facts/no-confirmed-compromise/index.html) | this site, from every captured source in the evidence vault (645 sources, vault nnd3i8iw at head 6f0d5c50bf12), as of its latest capture at 19:13 UTC on 27 October | reported | **A4** Corroborated●●●●○○ | 15/36 | [CISA](../../sources/cisa-kev-json/index.html) [CISA](../../sources/cisa-alert-php-20261021/index.html) [Huntress](../../sources/huntress-php2shell-rapid-response/index.html) [Amazon](../../sources/aws-security-blog-madpot/index.html) [SecurityWeek](../../sources/securityweek-first-attempts-sensors/index.html) [SecurityWeek](../../sources/securityweek-exploitation-days-before/index.html) [Recorded Future](../../sources/recordedfuture-php2shell/index.html) [Imperva Threat Research](../../sources/imperva-blog-php2shell/index.html) [Weird Gloop](../../sources/weirdgloop-blog-php2shell/index.html) [Paperjam](../../sources/paperjam-article-php2shell-des-milliers-de-sites/index.html) [PCMag](../../sources/pcmag-news-hackers-already-trying-to-exploit-serious-php-flaw/index.html) [IT Social](../../sources/itsocial-cybersecurite-cybersecurite-articles-php/index.html) [Lupa.cz](../../sources/lupa-cvut-cyber-attack/index.html) [Yahoo! News Japan](../../sources/yahoo-jp-gmo-fx-login-leak/index.html) [産経ニュース](../../sources/sankei-dmm-service-halt/index.html) [INTERNET Watch](../../sources/impress-watch-valtec/index.html) [The Verge](../../sources/the-verge-php2shell-websites-down/index.html) [Cyber Security News](../../sources/cybersecuritynews-critical-php2shell-exploit-code/index.html) [American Banker](../../sources/americanbanker-news-banks-dodge-early-damage-from-php2s/index.html) [The Next Web](../../sources/the-next-web-php2shell-no-confirmed-breaches/index.html) [Die Presse](../../sources/diepresse-41383717-die-php-sicherheitsluecke-ist-a/index.html) [voix](../../sources/voix-business-cards-rainforest-ip-activity-an/index.html) [Haber.com](../../sources/haber-teknoloji-siber-guvenlik-baskanligi-ndan/index.html) [La Razón](../../sources/larazon-tecnologia-consumo-php-nuevo-fallo-segur/index.html) [TechGaming.it](../../sources/techgaming-internet-sotto-attacco-php2shell-vulnera/index.html) [Bitpage.de](../../sources/bitpage-php2shell-php-sicherheitsluecke-webseite/index.html) [CISA](../../sources/cisa-alert-kev-20261026/index.html) [CISA](../../sources/cisa-kev-catalog/index.html) [CISA KEV](../../sources/cisa-kev-kev-catalog-page/index.html) [THN](../../sources/the-hacker-news-cisa-confirms-php2shell-exploitation/index.html) [Craft CMS](../../sources/craft-cms-craft-cloud-and-php2shell/index.html) [Broadcom Security](../../sources/broadcom-security-broadcom-php2shell-response/index.html) [Salesforce](../../sources/salesforce-general-message-20000267/index.html) [Arista Networks](../../sources/arista-security-advisory-0200/index.html) [Splunk](../../sources/splunk-svd-2026-1013/index.html) [NETGEAR](../../sources/netgear-000070960/index.html) |

## Events that cite it

No timeline event cites this source yet.

## The bytes
capture 20261027T191336Z · HTTP 200 · https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/cisa-confirms-active-exploitation-of.html- `headers.json` 7b257c7d012ab8ff718e8c838ec5905708bd0b5d3130b41a5afb825c8c457c01 854 bytes
- `page.html` 668ff6b191665a36248505cf5f41340513d01827a3041f9ba0b97ff86f762408 175,739 bytes
- `provenance.json` 1b823de83a79fb5808ac78c84de6b70c84380bd905550dd32d6a46b7ded673a4 1,750 bytes
- `rendered.html` 41054b2f5cef72a9f585f03d3de4cf6e6075cc88e9f0b61ba13063b4786d4ffc 171,400 bytes
- `screenshot.jpg` af1949f20499f59cf89d2308d5fb31e6586af1d4b3f0fe917b82cd216c34648c 501,097 bytes
- `text.txt` e0c45db168f660842d168e63b7cf9f6f6c89a11c7adbe45890f0377c078d4019 7,474 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 →](../index.html)


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site v0.22.49 · data as of 2026-10-27T19:13Z · vault commit 6f0d5c50bf12 · https://refs.php.oct.2026.newsroom.sgit.ai/sources/the-hacker-news-cisa-confirms-php2shell-exploitation/index.html