PHP Foundation Reveals Two Critical RCE Vulnerabilities Fixed After 2024 Discovery Delays
The PHP Foundation has published a detailed account of the discovery and remediation process for two critical vulnerabilities in PHP that could allow remote code execution without authentication.
The flaws, identified as CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, involve core components related to memory management and error handling that are invoked by almost every request, giving them an exceptionally wide attack surface.
On October 21, 2026, the foundation released patched versions PHP 8.5.12, PHP 8.4.27, PHP 8.3.36, and PHP 8.2.35 to resolve the issues. Organizations running any supported PHP branch are urged to apply the updates immediately.
Discovery Timeline and Remediation Challenges
One of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-109618, was first flagged during an external security audit conducted in 2024. Although the potential for exploitation was recognized at the time, the exact attack path remained unclear, and higher-priority issues took precedence due to limited resources.
Additional complications arose from the need to coordinate disclosure among multiple stakeholders while minimizing performance impact, resulting in a prolonged remediation effort.
The planned coordinated release was disrupted when details leaked ahead of the official announcement, creating further confusion in the community.
Security researchers and system administrators are advised to review the foundation’s advisory and verify that all PHP installations have been updated to the latest patched releases.
Related articles
Node.js Issues Security Releases for 26.x, 24.x and 22.x Fixing High-Severity TLS and Brotli Flaws
Node.js published security updates on October 21, 2026 for the 26.x, 24.x and 22.x release lines. The patches address multiple high-severity vulnerabilities affecting TLS hostname validation and the Brotli decoder, along with updates to critical dependencies including OpenSSL and Undici. Several CVEs cover bypasses in certificate hostname checks when IP addresses use full-width digits or when hosts resolve loosely to IP addresses. A particularly serious out-of-bounds write in the Brotli decoder (CVE-2026-111497) could enable remote code execution on services processing compressed responses. Additional fixes resolve keep-alive socket timing issues, DNS resolution truncation with NUL characters, and entropy caching problems in crypto.randomUUID and randomInt functions. The releases also update c-ares, Undici, OpenSSL, SQLite and ca-cert bundles following the eMudhra intermediate CA compromise.
Atlassian October Security Bulletin Flags 176 Third-Party Library Vulnerabilities Across Jira, Confluence and Bitbucket
Atlassian released its October security bulletin detailing 176 vulnerability entries distributed across seven products including Jira, Confluence, Bamboo, Bitbucket, Crowd, Fisheye and Crucible. Of these, 162 entries carry high severity and 14 are rated critical, though the total does not represent 176 unique flaws because the same identifiers recur when multiple products share the same third-party library. All critical issues originate in external components rather than Atlassian code, with the most severe being CVE-2026-65637 in the Coyote component of Apache Tomcat used by Confluence, which allows interception of server-client connections. Affected versions and corresponding fixes were published for Confluence Data Center, Bamboo, Bitbucket Data Center, Jira Software and Jira Service Management, with the company stressing that administrators must compare exact build numbers against the full corrected-version table. No exploitation of the listed issues had been reported as of 22 October, and Atlassian classifies the inherited exposure from third-party libraries as lower priority, issuing separate critical alerts only for immediate-risk cases.
Node.js Addresses 10 Vulnerabilities Including High-Severity RCE Risk in Brotli Decompression
The Node.js development team disclosed ten vulnerabilities across multiple versions of the JavaScript runtime on October 21, 2026. Four of the issues received a High severity rating, with one carrying a remote code execution risk through improper handling of Brotli-compressed data. The flaw tracked as CVE-2026-111497 affects Node.js 26.x, 24.x, and 22.x branches and stems from out-of-bounds memory writes during decompression. Additional High-severity problems involve DNS name resolution truncation when NUL characters are present and hostname verification bypasses in TLS certificate validation. The project also resolved three Medium and three Low severity issues related to certificate validation, snapshot entropy reuse, and file-access permission checks. Updated releases Node.js 26.12.1, 24.22.1, and 22.23.4 incorporate fixes for both the core issues and vulnerabilities in bundled components such as c-ares, OpenSSL, SQLite, and Undici. Users of unsupported older branches are advised to migrate to currently maintained versions.
HPE Discloses 72 Vulnerabilities in AOS-10 and AOS-8 Wireless LAN Operating Systems, 33 Rated Critical
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has published a security advisory detailing 72 vulnerabilities affecting its wireless LAN operating systems AOS-10 and AOS-8. The flaws impact mobility controllers, gateways, access points, and virtual machines running these platforms. Thirty-three of the issues received the highest severity rating of Critical, with eight vulnerabilities scoring the maximum CVSSv3.1 base score of 10.0. Specific examples include a buffer overflow tracked as CVE-2026-79847 in AOS-10, plus command injection and SQL injection flaws in AOS-8 that allow unauthenticated remote code execution. No exploitation of these vulnerabilities has been observed at the time of disclosure. The advisory was released on October 22, 2026, and organizations are urged to apply available patches promptly.