Cybersecurity Today

Black October in Cybersecurity: PHP RCE Panic, Brotli Surprise, and Why Basics Still Matter
In this special episode of Cyber Security Today, Jim and David discuss why the industry is calling the month "Black October," beginning with chaotic disclosure and leaked details of multiple PHP remote code execution vulnerabilities that triggered widespread anxiety and even service shutdowns by governments and other organizations.
They cover additional tensions from weak certificates issued by an intermediate CA in India, a breach disclosure by LiteLLM, and a major RCE initially thought to affect React/Node.js but later tied to Google's Brotli, which is widely deployed.
They note that while attacks began before patches and at least one European government was compromised, exploitation proved difficult and defenses often held, with limited confirmed victims so far. They argue AI is accelerating vulnerability discovery and democratizing capabilities, but emphasize "don't panic," focus on cyber hygiene basics, prioritize crown jewels, train staff, and address growing human fatigue as incident response capacity strains
00:00 Black October Begins
00:44 PHP Zero Day Chaos
03:51 More Hits Keep Coming
04:53 AI Hype And Reality
07:01 Exploitation In The Wild
09:15 Japan Breach Wave
13:23 Dont Panic Do Basics
15:38 Turn Crisis Into Budget
18:07 Training Beats Tools
21:21 Burnout On The Frontline
23:45 Know Your Crown Jewels
24:16 Final Thoughts And Outreach

Brotli Emergency Patches, PHP-to-Shell Exploited, and Australia Disrupts 180K Amadey Infections | Cybersecurity Today
On Cybersecurity Today (Oct. 28, 2026), Microsoft issues out-of-band .NET updates for a critical flaw in Google's Brotli library (CVE-2026-111497) that can enable remote privilege escalation and potentially remote code execution, with proof-of-concept exploits public and widespread exposure across ecosystems.
The episode also covers CISA confirming active exploitation of two "PHP to Shell" vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-109618/109619), with federal agencies facing an urgent patch deadline and broad impact across millions of PHP services and many vendors. In legal news, U.S. prosecutors allege Canadian ransomware negotiator Eduard Dubrovsky secretly worked for threat actors.
South Korean police say a former penetration tester used the Artex AI framework to breach 90+ organizations and steal 8.2 million records. Finally, Australia's Signals Directorate disrupts an Amadey botnet, cutting off 180,000 infected computers and destroying stolen data offered for sale.
00:00 Top Stories Rundown
00:32 Brotli Bug Emergency Patches
02:36 AI Noise in Vulnerability Hype
03:41 PHP to Shell Exploited Now
06:10 Ransomware Negotiator Accused
07:41 Artex AI Hacking Spree
10:04 Australia Disrupts Amadey Botnet
11:32 Wrap Up and Sign Off

PHP2Shell Hits European Government, New PHP RCE (No Patch Yet), Brotli "Node to Shell," and Capcom Breach
Attackers exploited the PHP2Shell remote code execution flaws to compromise a European government entity within two hours, stealing password hashes and MFA secrets, pivoting via NTLM relay toward Active Directory, and showing command output patterns Unit 42 says suggest an agentic AI attacker. Widespread scanning continues, with Cloudflare logging millions of attempts, Cyfirma reporting low-and-slow probing from nodes linked with moderate confidence to the Lazarus ecosystem, and defenders urged to watch for telltale crash sequences. PHP also disclosed a third RCE (CVE-2026-115560) with no patch yet but high exploitation requirements and a mitigation to disable session upload progress. Separately, a Brotli decoder memory corruption bug (CVE-2026-111497) affects Node.js and other software, with fixes delayed into October releases. Finally, Capcom says criminals breached Capcom ID, exposing data tied to 11.7 million accounts and resetting impacted passwords.
00:00 Headlines Overview
00:35 Government Breach Details
01:13 Global Scanning Surge
03:11 Third PHP RCE
05:00 Wildfire Or Smoke
06:08 Patch Race Warning
06:53 Brotli Node To Shell
08:47 Capcom Account Breach
10:21 Wrap Up And Outro

PHP Exploited Before Patch, Unpatched Linux SMB Bugs, GitLab Max-Severity Fix, and AI Agents in ConnectWise & Japan Breaches
Cybersecurity Today (Oct. 23, 2026) covers active exploitation of two critical PHP RCE flaws beginning at least four days before patches shipped, with multiple firms seeing failed pre-disclosure attempts and the UK NCSC urging immediate patching or taking servers offline.
It also details two publicly disclosed, unpatched Linux kernel ksmbd SMB RCE bugs (one unauthenticated on port 445), exposed after ZDI credited Trend Micro's AI scanner and copied public mailing lists without patches. GitLab issued fixes for a maximum-severity unauthenticated RCE (CVE-2026-11-0264) in its regex compiler, following recent high-severity GitLab issues.
Microsoft attributed the ConnectWise cloud backup compromise to China-aligned Storm-0940 using the Artex agentic AI framework, and Artex-related activity was also found in attacks on Japanese companies amid a broader breach wave, including a malware incident affecting up to 26,739 Haname Desktopcloud customer servers.
00:00 Headlines And Intro
00:33 PHP To Shell Exploitation
02:07 Patch Now Impact Scope
02:47 Linux KSMBD Bugs Exposed
04:10 AI Disclosure Process Drama
05:25 GitLab Max Severity Patch
07:30 ConnectWise Breach AI Agents
09:24 Artex Spreads In Japan
11:18 GMO Haname VPS Malware
12:24 Closing And Sign Off

PHP2Shell: Emergency PHP RCE Patches, Leaks, and Early Exploitation (CVE-2026-109618/109619)
In a special edition of Cybersecurity Today, host David Shipley covers emergency PHP patches for two critical unauthenticated remote code execution flaws, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, affecting PHP 5.4+ and essentially all PHP deployments serving web requests across major stacks.
He explains the shared root cause involving corrupted memory after abnormal request termination, outlines the fixed releases (PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, 8.2.35), and notes no official updates for PHP 8.1 and older beyond limited source backports. Mitigations and Cloudflare WAF rules are described as partial, with patching urged by the UK NCSC.
The episode details AI-assisted discovery and coordination via OpenAI's Patch the Planet and tools from Wiz, how leaks on Hacker News accelerated disclosure, and reports of early in-the-wild exploitation attempts, outages, and expectations of rapid exploit development, web shells, and a long tail of downstream patching challenges.
00:00 PHP2Shell Emergency Alert
01:32 What The CVEs Do
02:05 Patches And Mitigations
03:40 AI Discovery And Leak
05:32 Exploit Chatter Spreads
06:46 Early Impact And Outages
08:22 Exposure By The Numbers
09:53 What Happens Next
11:50 Wrap Up And Thanks