Tell HN: 2x PHP RCE CVEs with CVSS 10.0 Incoming

304 points by petecooper 4 days ago

A reliable source has indicated an announcement is scheduled for 22 October 2026 at 18:00 CEST regarding 2x PHP RCEs with a CVSS score of 10.0.

I have no evidence beyond "source: trust me, bro", but if you're running PHP in production, be ready to update as a priority.

These CVEs reportedly relate to remote code execution in all affected PHP versions from PHP 5 onwards.

These are the two reserved CVEs for the reported upcoming announcement:

CVE-2026-109618

CVE-2026-109619

lol768 4 days ago
There comes at point at which it is better for everyone to just disclose the details and pursue Full Disclosure. I think we reached that point hours ago.
It has been incredibly frustrating watching Twitter and that (potentially, I don't know how reliable the leaks are) being a better information source than anything else, at least so that those of us hosting stuff ourselves can try and explore if there are any defensive measures that can be put in place in lieu of any actual fixed builds being released.
I suspect this is already being actively exploited now.
https://x.com/J4ck3LSyN/status/2112703096443097263
They've now posted a proof of concept as well.
- jwitthuhn 4 days ago
  Seems like some of the people engaging in "responsible disclosure" were not very responsible and it leaked out.
  With that info public they do really need to just release the fix, assuming that tweet is accurate.
  edit: Mitigation for impacted versions is to set `session.upload_progress.enabled = Off` in php.ini
  - lol768 4 days ago
    > edit: Mitigation for impacted versions is to set `session.upload_progress.enabled = Off` in php.ini
    I think this is only partial mitigation: https://x.com/Dinosn/status/2112717168349712734
    I have additionally followed the advice to just ban multipart uploads before the request even touches PHP (luckily my app doesn't use them at all). I do now know if this conclusively resolves it.
  - Webfiletools_de 4 days ago
    One gotcha for anyone applying this tonight: on a lot of Debian/Ubuntu-style setups the CLI and PHP-FPM read different php.ini files (for example /etc/php/8.x/cli/ vs /etc/php/8.x/fpm/), so "php -i" from a shell can show it Off while the web side still has it On. Check it through a phpinfo() page or the FPM binary itself, and remember to reload php-fpm afterwards. On shared hosting where you can't touch the main ini, it should be settable per directory in .user.ini, but that file is cached for a few minutes by default, so give it time before testing. And as others said, treat it as a stopgap until the actual patch lands.
devttyeu 4 days ago
@dang if the speculations circulating around are anything to go by this is apocalyptic and deserves to be amplified such that the right people see this before it’s too late.
CERT-EU even suggests isolating any systems that may be exposed and can’t be patched quickly.
Speculation is that the affected subsystem runs before any application code and affects all default installs.
- extraduder_ire 4 days ago
  @dang is a no-op, you need to email him or the hn@ycombinator.com address
samueloph 4 days ago
Deciding to announce it like this is wild, it's an invitation for everyone to put their agents to work in order to find out what the vulnerability is and exploit it, while nobody is allowed to patch it until tomorrow.
- nullbio 4 days ago
  It's already been found and shared on X. It's only a matter of hours before untold numbers of sites are hacked.
  - samueloph 3 days ago
    exactly, that's why in my opinion the patches should have been made available straight away instead of doing this, it made it worse.
- beberlei 4 days ago
  It was leaked
  - Operyl 4 days ago
    Where?
    walth 4 days ago
    Here
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50167754
    Operyl 4 days ago
    I don't see any details of the vulnerability leaked except "code execution"...?
    tossit444 4 days ago
    It got flagged already, can't see it.
    solyin 4 days ago
    Whew! Imagine if the details were documented in the clear on HN for anyone to see.
    dang 3 days ago
    (We've since merged the threads)
phab 4 days ago
Tweet allegedly showing exploit at work:
https://x.com/k_firsov/status/2112641845926989944
(video). Yikes
- 1over137 4 days ago
  This seems to work without an X account: https://nitter.app/k_firsov/status/2112641845926989944
  - uncletammy 3 days ago
    But not with a vpn
- Jotalea 3 days ago
  nitter instance: https://twitter.jotalea.com.ar/k_firsov/status/2112641845926...
- koolala 4 days ago
  This video is iconic
unethical_ban 4 days ago
Rumored mitigation from other HN threads:
>Mitigation for impacted versions is to set `session.upload_progress.enabled = Off` in php.ini
It's a feature my wiki doesn't use, so even though I'm patching ASAP it did me no harm in flipping that bit. In fact, I could probably just shut down my server for the day...
edit: I simply shut down my dokuwiki for the day. No one uses it but me anyway.
edit2: https://old.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/1xb2utu/upcoming_criti...
Someone claiming to be a releng for PHP says INI settings won't save you.
potaytopotahto 4 days ago
Looks like details about the exploits have already leaked on twitter, if the info is correct then it can be mitigated by setting session.upload_progress.enabled = Off until you get the opportunity to update
- 4lun 4 days ago
  Not enough apparently
  > The PHP 8.6 release manager is on Reddit saying this can’t be fixed with ini settings alone, and needs PHP to be patched
  https://x.com/johnplaysdf/status/2112737802379047099?s=46
  > INI settings alone won't protect you. You need to patch PHP.
  https://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/1xb2utu/comment/phyu5m...
- rbarden 4 days ago
  The person who posted the main video that's getting shared confirmed this as well: https://twitter.com/k_firsov/status/2112718728232329240
unreal37 4 days ago
This was supposed to be embargoed.
So your reliable source can't keep a secret.
- JonKF 3 days ago
  Responsible disclosure is broken in 2026. All it takes is a vague implication that a vulnerability exists and there are enough people with enough AI tokens that it will be found quickly.
- petecooper 3 days ago
  Yeah, she lied when I asked if it was under responsible disclosure/co-ordinated disclosure -- otherwise I wouldn't have posted it!
vincent_s 4 days ago
Two things you can do now:
1. Turn off session upload progress
2. Block multipart requests at the web server
More info: https://www.vincentschmalbach.com/cve-2026-109618-and-cve-20...
- Svip 3 days ago
  Or:
  3. Disable PHP entirely on your server, and live with broken sites until the patch arrives.
  That's what I did; I can live with my sites being down until it's possible to patch PHP. Though, there are likely others who cannot. The CERT-EU advisory is basically advising the same thing[1].
  [1] https://cert.europa.eu/publications/security-advisories/2026...
  - trollbridge 3 days ago
    I maintain one old site in PHP. This just got way easier to communicate with my users when I can communicate that major government services are also offline.
    Our current plan is to refactor this into Rust using a coding agent. It looks feasible to get this done today.
lioeters 4 days ago
This vulnerability has already been reproduced by a third party with LLM assist. And of course they posted the details on Twitter - and someone else posted the link here just now. So the cat's out of the bag.
That means roughly 70% of all websites (WordPress, Laravel, Drupal, Joomla, Magento) are currently open to remote code execution. About half of that is running an older PHP 5 and 7 that apparently will not receive the urgent security patch.
> Two heap use-after-free primitives in PHP's `session.upload_progress` handler
Guess it's time to rewrite PHP in Rust. Claude, make no mistakes, you can do it!
- jesseschalken 2 days ago
  > Guess it's time to rewrite PHP in Rust.
  The Truffle Framework on GraalVM is a better approach to writing interpreters these days, because you get a JIT and lots of language interop for free.
  There was a PHP implementation here: https://github.com/abertschi/graalphp
reddalo 4 days ago
Official statement released by PHP: https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-20-1
Statement by CERT-EU: https://cert.europa.eu/publications/security-advisories/2026... :
>Where immediate patching is not feasible, organisations should consider isolating internet-facing applications from public networks until a fix is available.
It seems serious. Well, good luck isolating all PHP applications from the public internet...
SchizoDuckie 4 days ago
Well great thanks. I need details now. Where, core? Extensions? What config?
My guess is on some request filtering thing
- reddalo 4 days ago
  Yes, it's on core. All versions from PHP 5 onwards. Only PHP 8 will be patched.
  - joshuat 4 days ago
    So a few million WordPress sites are just going to be overnight targets.
    Although I guess that's not a dramatic change in the status quo.
    trollbridge 3 days ago
    It's not. I maintain some WP sites, including one that is so custom that it can't be run on a service like WPEngine. I just assume it will be hacked on a regular basis.
    Large swaths of the filesystem are chattr +i'd, non-writeable by the user PHP runs as. I have capabilities and network rules applied so that that context can't communicate outbound on the network. I have a WAF that restricts outbound traffic (normal users never download something as big as even 1 megabyte). I have a set of firewall rules to tarpit any automated scans that come near the site.
    Nowadays, I run an AI agent continuously that scans the VM everything is hidden in for any signs of an intrusion, plus the host that contains the VM as well. I make sure that agent is sandboxed as well. (This only costs a few dollars a day in tokens which I bill to the customer.)
    After this next world-wide intrusion, I may finally be able to convince the client they need to get off the WordPress e-commerce site that they got a teenage girl to do for free a decade ago.

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