PHP2Shell: Two Critical PHP Flaws Enable Unauthenticated Code Execution, Patched October 21
PHP released fixes on 21 October 2026 for two critical vulnerabilities that could allow remote code execution without authentication. One stems from an out-of-memory failure that can interrupt initialization and leave invalid internal request data to be trusted during cleanup, while the other involves request-owned state outliving its memory so a later request can reuse stale data. Affected setups include PHP-FPM, Apache with mod_php, php-cgi, FrankenPHP and LiteSpeed, with mod_php flagged as the highest risk. Discovery, reporting and public disclosure occurred on separate dates, and the underlying bugs were traced to a 2024 audit finding and later research using AI-assisted searches. The article stresses that an affected runtime does not by itself prove a compromise, and recommends identifying the PHP runtime serving web requests and applying the patch.
This is an AI-generated summary. ShortSingh links to the original source for the complete article.

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