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

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

284 points | by petecooper 1 day ago

33 comments

  • lol768 1 day 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 1 day 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 1 day 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 1 day 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 1 day 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 1 day ago
      @dang is a no-op, you need to email him or the hn@ycombinator.com address
  • phab 1 day ago
    Tweet allegedly showing exploit at work:

    https://x.com/k_firsov/status/2112641845926989944

    (video). Yikes

    [-]
  • samueloph 1 day 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.
    [-]
    • beberlei 1 day ago
      It was leaked
      [-]
    • nullbio 1 day 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 23 hours 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.
  • vincent_s 1 day 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 1 day 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 1 day 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.

  • potaytopotahto 1 day 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
    [-]
  • unreal37 1 day ago
    This was supposed to be embargoed.

    So your reliable source can't keep a secret.

    [-]
    • JonKF 1 day 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 1 day ago
      Yeah, she lied when I asked if it was under responsible disclosure/co-ordinated disclosure -- otherwise I wouldn't have posted it!
  • reddalo 1 day 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...

  • lioeters 1 day 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 4 hours 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

  • iheartrms 10 hours ago
    This is why I abandoned PHP years ago. All of my stuff is static site now. Generated by Pelican.

    PHP has an abominable security history. I thought it was actually falling out of fashion. I was shocked today to hear it powers 69% of the web still.

  • Amsozzer 1 day ago
    Hey guys,

    I have a long day tomorrow auditing all our php websites and so I wrote a simple CLI tool that finds every place php version is mentioned in a repo eg (Dockerfile tags, compose/k8s images, setup-php in CI, .tool-versions, distro php packages, composer) and flags the end of life branches now.

    Floating tags and distro packages can't be labelled deterministically since the tool only reads the files right now so they get labelled "check manually"

    I will also update the package as soon as the fixes drop with the updated versioning which will not require anything on the users end (no updates required)

    Till then check out npx php2shell-repo-audit . https://github.com/Amsozzer1/php2shell-repo-audit

  • HotGarbage 1 day ago
    https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-20-1
  • SchizoDuckie 1 day ago
    Well great thanks. I need details now. Where, core? Extensions? What config?

    My guess is on some request filtering thing

    [-]
    • reddalo 1 day ago
      Yes, it's on core. All versions from PHP 5 onwards. Only PHP 8 will be patched.
      [-]
      • joshuat 1 day 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 1 day 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.

      • Yiin 1 day ago
        surely not only 8, that would be insane
        [-]
        • rpeden 1 day ago
          Everything before 8.2 is past EOL.
          [-]
          • brazzy 1 day ago
            This is serious enough that EOL should not matter. Of course, if someone is still running PHP 7 or even older, they're probably not updating anyway.
    • dwm 1 day ago
      Details are due for disclosure at 1400hrs UTC tomorrow. That timeline may yet change.
  • ShowalkKama 1 day ago
    Those CVEs refer to vulnerabilities in wordpress plugins (not php) and the vulnerabilities are not RCEs.

    Am I missing something?

    https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/cve-2026-9618 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/cve-2026-9619

    [-]
    • dylanpyle 1 day ago
      It sounds like the upcoming ones are 2026-109618/109619, not 9618/9619
      [-]
      • ShowalkKama 1 day ago
        I even double checked, I'm so blind.
  • Numerlor 1 day ago
    Well this is about as bad as it gets, so I guess the internet will get a bit of test and old forums will turn into a botnet
  • potaytopotahto 1 day ago
    Details about the exploits have already been leaked on twitter, don't want to put the details here but if its correct then it can be mitigated by setting session.upload_progress.enabled = Off
    [-]
    • qingcharles 1 day ago
      Sadly this says it's probably not enough:

      https://phpc.social/@Girgias/117476477429221001

    • bpbp-mango 1 day ago
      session.use_strict_mode = 1 as well. some advice around disabling multipart uploads too.
    • EGreg 1 day ago
      I have heard Kirill Firsov say that, but does anyone even know the vulnerabilities? Could be a meme.
      [-]
      • potaytopotahto 1 day ago
        Yes its two hanging pointers related to the upload progress handler that can be used for RCE after some heap grooming, disabling upload progress means that the function that contains the vulnerable code never runs.
  • kevinday 1 day ago
    Quick correction to the text above, PHP says the patch/announcement will be available Wednesday, 21 October 2026 at 14:00 UTC.

    https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-20-1

    [-]
    • gnabgib 1 day ago
      Yes it's now Wednesday, but Thursday was originally correct. Because of this HN post, it's been moved up to tomorrow.
  • archon810 1 day ago
    Here's the alleged demo video. It's called php2shell https://x.com/k_firsov/status/2112641845926989944 and it's scary as hell.
  • consocio 21 hours ago
    https://github.com/consocio/php2shell-audit/ GLM 5.3 just wrote it to audit all my php sites. I hope it is useful to you
  • kevbo823 1 day ago
    If you don't do local file include (LFI) esp. from a $_GET or $_POST then to what degree would the site be impacted?
    [-]
  • unethical_ban 1 day 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.

  • Jotalea 1 day ago
    well, until the patch drops I'm pretty much vulnerable.

    I went and disabled my websites that run on PHP, and I will most likely migrate it to a VPS. maybe even another language like golang.

  • coderdiaz 1 day ago
    The full details will be available on 8:00 AM at Mexico City
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