The set of vulnerabilities is dubbed PHP2Shell and disclosure is scheduled for 14:00 UTC with attacks expected to follow soon after.
It is adviced to take offline every non-vital services until the patch has been installed (or the Docker image has been updated with a patched version of PHP)
Why do it this way? I’m genuinely unaware.
With the plex2shell, they fixed it in a previous update, then told us later.
If PHP knows what the problem is, why announce it now, and then release the patch. Why not release the patch, say hey guys this is an important one, and then tell the world/every script kiddie who didn’t know about php2shell AFTER everyone is patched?
Like I get it, I guess, php2shell must already be happening, the vulnerability is already there, but like… Shut up about it? Right? Let more people patch before you announce why the patch exists?
I’m new to this world so maybe this is normal?
Using a tool like Shodan, I can quickly get a list of addresses that have a specific version of PHP behind it.
It sounds like this is a cvss 9.0 or higher for PHP which is bonkers because PHP is such a huge amount of the internet.
My guess is releasing these CVEs the normal way could have catastrophic consequences. They’re giving stsadmins a heads up so there is less of a scramble when sysadmins read “hey fix your shit it’s totally vulnerable” before they have their coffee.
Like as a sysadmin, this is a great way for them to do this.
I will in 10 mins alert my team that the whole site has to come offline for a period today. I don’t need to take it offline in an emergency and tell my boss to send out a memo.
They originally tried to keep it secret but it got leaked. Initial reports were only that CVSS was 9.2 and it was a permissionless remote code execution exploit. After it got leaked what the exploit was, they gave up.