Apache | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a remote denial-of-service exploit that affects major web servers, including NGINX, Apache HTTPD, Microsoft IIS, Envoy, and Cloudflare Pingora. The vulnerability has been codenamed HTTP/2 Bomb by Calif. "The vulnerable behavior exists in each server's default HTTP/2 configuration," the company said, adding it was discovered by OpenAI Codex by chaining together two known techniques: a compression bomb and a Slowloris -style hold. "The bomb targets HPACK, HTTP/2's header compression scheme: one byte on the wire becomes one full header allocation on the server, repeated thousands of times per request," Calif added. "The hold is a zero-byte flow-control window that keeps the server from ever freeing any of it." HPACK is a dedicated header compression algorithm for HTTP/2 used for compressing request and response metadata using Huffman encoding that results in an average reduction of 30% in header siz...

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has released security updates to address several security vulnerabilities in the HTTP Server, including a severe vulnerability that could potentially lead to remote code execution (RCE). The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-23918 (CVSS score: 8.8), has been described as a case of "double free and possible RCE" in the HTTP/2 protocol handling. This issue affects Apache HTTP Server 2.4.66 and has been addressed in version 2.4.67. Striga.ai co-founder Bartlomiej Dmitruk and ISEC.pl researcher Stanislaw Strzalkowski have been credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability. When reached for comment, Dmitruk told The Hacker News via email that the severity of CVE-2026-23918 is critical, as it can be exploited to achieve denial-of-service (DoS) and RCE. Additional details of the vulnerability are below - CVE-2026-23918 is a double-free in Apache httpd 2.4.66 mod_http2 , specifically in the stream cleanup path of h2_mplx.c. T...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new campaign that exploits a known security flaw impacting Apache HTTP Server to deliver a cryptocurrency miner called Linuxsys . The vulnerability in question is CVE-2021-41773 (CVSS score: 7.5), a high-severity path traversal vulnerability in Apache HTTP Server version 2.4.49 that could result in remote code execution. "The attacker leverages compromised legitimate websites to distribute malware, enabling stealthy delivery and evasion of detection," VulnCheck's Jacob Baines said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The infection sequence, observed earlier this month and originating from an Indonesian IP address 103.193.177[.]152 , is designed to drop a next-stage payload from "repositorylinux[.]org" using curl or wget. The payload is a shell script that's responsible for downloading the Linuxsys cryptocurrency miner from five different legitimate websites, suggesting that the threat actors behind the ...

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has released patches to address a maximum severity vulnerability in the MINA Java network application framework that could result in remote code execution under specific conditions. Tracked as CVE-2024-52046 , the vulnerability carries a CVSS score of 10.0. It affects versions 2.0.X, 2.1.X, and 2.2.X. "The ObjectSerializationDecoder in Apache MINA uses Java's native deserialization protocol to process incoming serialized data but lacks the necessary security checks and defenses," the project maintainers said in an advisory released on December 25, 2024. "This vulnerability allows attackers to exploit the deserialization process by sending specially crafted malicious serialized data, potentially leading to remote code execution (RCE) attacks." However, it bears noting that the vulnerability is exploitable only if the "IoBuffer#getObject()" method is invoked in combination with certain classes such as ProtocolC...

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has shipped security updates to address a critical security flaw in Traffic Control that, if successfully exploited, could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary Structured Query Language (SQL) commands in the database. The SQL injection vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-45387 , is rated 9.9 out of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system. "An SQL injection vulnerability in Traffic Ops in Apache Traffic Control <= 8.0.1, >= 8.0.0 allows a privileged user with role 'admin,' 'federation,' 'operations,' 'portal,' or 'steering' to execute arbitrary SQL against the database by sending a specially-crafted PUT request," project maintainers said in an advisory. Apache Traffic Control is an open-source implementation of a Content Delivery Network (CDN). It was announced as a top-level project (TLP) by the AS in June 2018. Tencent YunDing Security Lab researcher Yuan Luo has been credited with discoveri...

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has released a security update to address an important vulnerability in its Tomcat server software that could result in remote code execution (RCE) under certain conditions. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-56337 , has been described as an incomplete mitigation for CVE-2024-50379 (CVSS score: 9.8), another critical security flaw in the same product that was previously addressed on December 17, 2024. "Users running Tomcat on a case insensitive file system with the default servlet write enabled (readonly initialisation parameter set to the non-default value of false) may need additional configuration to fully mitigate CVE-2024-50379 depending on which version of Java they are using with Tomcat," the project maintainers said in an advisory last week. Both the flaws are Time-of-check Time-of-use ( TOCTOU ) race condition vulnerabilities that could result in code execution on case-insensitive file systems when the default servlet is...

A new zero-day pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability has been disclosed in the Apache OFBiz open-source enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that could allow threat actors to achieve remote code execution on affected instances. Tracked as CVE-2024-38856 , the flaw has a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0. It affects Apache OFBiz versions prior to 18.12.15. "The root cause of the vulnerability lies in a flaw in the authentication mechanism," SonicWall, which discovered and reported the shortcoming, said in a statement. "This flaw allows an unauthenticated user to access functionalities that generally require the user to be logged in, paving the way for remote code execution." CVE-2024-38856 is also a patch bypass for CVE-2024-36104 , a path traversal vulnerability that was addressed in early June with the release of 18.12.14. SonicWall described the flaw as residing in the override view functionality that exposes critical endpoi...

Organizations in Taiwan and a U.S. non-governmental organization (NGO) based in China have been targeted by a Beijing-affiliated state-sponsored hacking group called Daggerfly using an upgraded set of malware tools. The campaign is a sign that the group "also engages in internal espionage," Symantec's Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, said in a new report published today. "In the attack on this organization, the attackers exploited a vulnerability in an Apache HTTP server to deliver their MgBot malware." Daggerfly, also known by the names Bronze Highland and Evasive Panda, was previously observed using the MgBot modular malware framework in connection with an intelligence-gathering mission aimed at telecom service providers in Africa. It's known to be operational since 2012. "Daggerfly appears to be capable of responding to exposure by quickly updating its toolset to continue its espionage activities with minimal disruption," the compan...

Threat actors are actively exploiting a recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting Apache HugeGraph-Server that could lead to remote code execution attacks. Tracked as CVE-2024-27348 (CVSS score: 9.8), the vulnerability impacts all versions of the software before 1.3.0. It has been described as a remote command execution flaw in the Gremlin graph traversal language API. "Users are recommended to upgrade to version 1.3.0 with Java11 and enable the Auth system, which fixes the issue," the Apache Software Foundation noted in late April 2024. "Also you could enable the 'Whitelist-IP/port' function to improve the security of RESTful-API execution." Additional technical specifics about the flaw were released by penetration testing company SecureLayer7 in early June, stating it enables an attacker to bypass sandbox restrictions and achieve code execution, giving them complete control over a susceptible server. This week, the Shadowserver Foundat...

Muhstik botnet exploits a critical Apache RocketMQ flaw (CVE-2023-33246) for remote code execution , targeting Linux servers and IoT devices for DDoS attacks and cryptocurrency mining . Infection involves executing a shell script from a remote IP, downloading the Muhstik malware binary ("pty3") , and ensuring persistence by copying to multiple directories and editing system files. With over 5,000 vulnerable Apache RocketMQ instances still exposed, organizations must update to the latest version to mitigate risks, while securing MS-SQL servers against brute-force attacks and ensuring regular password changes. The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet known as Muhstik has been observed leveraging a now-patched security flaw impacting Apache RocketMQ to co-opt susceptible servers and expand its scale. "Muhstik is a well-known threat targeting IoT devices and Linux-based servers, notorious for its ability to infect devices and utilize the...

Apache has released a security advisory warning of a critical security flaw in the Struts 2 open-source web application framework that could result in remote code execution. Tracked as  CVE-2023-50164 , the vulnerability is  rooted  in a flawed "file upload logic" that could enable unauthorized path traversal and could be exploited under the circumstances to upload a malicious file and achieve execution of arbitrary code. Struts is a Java framework that uses the Model-View-Controller ( MVC ) architecture for building enterprise-oriented web applications. Steven Seeley of Source Incite has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw, which impacts the following versions of the software - Struts 2.3.37 (EOL) Struts 2.5.0 - Struts 2.5.32, and Struts 6.0.0 - Struts 6.3.0 Patches for the bug are available in versions 2.5.33 and 6.3.0.2 or greater. There are no workarounds that remediate the issue. "All developers are strongly advised to perform this upgr...

Multiple ransomware groups have begun to actively exploit recently disclosed flaws in Atlassian Confluence and Apache ActiveMQ. Cybersecurity firm Rapid7  said  it observed the exploitation of  CVE-2023-22518  and  CVE-2023-22515  in multiple customer environments, some of which have been leveraged for the deployment of  Cerber  (aka  C3RB3R ) ransomware. Both vulnerabilities are critical, allowing threat actors to create unauthorized Confluence administrator accounts and lead to a loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Atlassian, on November 6,  updated its advisory  to note that it observed "several active exploits and reports of threat actors using ransomware" and that it is revising the CVSS score of the flaw from 9.1 to 10.0, indicating maximum severity. The escalation, the Australian company said, is due to the change in the scope of the attack. Attack chains involve mass exploitation of vulnerable inte...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning of suspected exploitation of a recently disclosed critical security flaw in the Apache ActiveMQ open-source message broker service that could result in remote code execution. "In both instances, the adversary attempted to deploy ransomware binaries on target systems in an effort to ransom the victim organizations," cybersecurity firm Rapid7  disclosed  in a report published Wednesday. "Based on the ransom note and available evidence, we attribute the activity to the HelloKitty ransomware family, whose source code was leaked on a forum in early October." The intrusions are said to involve the exploitation of  CVE-2023-46604 , a remote code execution vulnerability in Apache ActiveMQ that allows a threat actor to run arbitrary shell commands. It's worth noting that the  vulnerability  carries a CVSS score of 10.0, indicating maximum severity. It has been  addressed  in ActiveMQ versions 5.15.16, 5.16.7, 5.17.6, ...

Multiple security flaws have been disclosed in Apache OpenMeetings, a web conferencing solution, that could be potentially exploited by malicious actors to seize control of admin accounts and run malicious code on susceptible servers. "Attackers can bring the application into an unexpected state, which allows them to take over any user account, including the admin account," Sonar vulnerability researcher Stefan Schiller  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The acquired admin privileges can further be leveraged to exploit another vulnerability allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code on the Apache OpenMeetings server." Following responsible disclosure on March 20, 2023, the vulnerabilities were addressed with the release of  Openmeetings version 7.1.0  that was released on May 9, 2023. The list of three flaws is as follows - CVE-2023-28936  (CVSS score: 5.3) - Insufficient check of invitation hash CVE-2023-29032  (CVSS score: 8.1) - An...

The maintainers of the  Apache Superset  open source data visualization software have released fixes to plug an insecure default configuration that could lead to remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2023-27524  (CVSS score: 8.9), impacts versions up to and including 2.0.1 and relates to the use of a default SECRET_KEY that could be abused by attackers to authenticate and access unauthorized resources on internet-exposed installations. Naveen Sunkavally, the chief architect at Horizon3.ai, described the issue as "a dangerous default configuration in Apache Superset that allows an unauth attacker to gain remote code execution, harvest credentials, and compromise data." It's worth noting that the flaw does not affect Superset instances that have changed the default value for the SECRET_KEY config to a more cryptographically secure random string. The cybersecurity firm, which found that the SECRET_KEY is defaulted to the value "\x02\x01thisismy...

WordPress security company Wordfence on Thursday said it started detecting exploitation attempts targeting the newly disclosed flaw in Apache Commons Text on October 18, 2022. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2022-42889  aka Text4Shell , has been assigned a severity ranking of 9.8 out of a possible 10.0 on the CVSS scale and affects versions 1.5 through 1.9 of the library. It's also similar to the now infamous  Log4Shell  vulnerability in that the  issue  is rooted in the manner  string substitutions  carried out during  DNS, script, and URL lookups  could lead to the execution of arbitrary code on susceptible systems when passing untrusted input. "The attacker can send a crafted payload remotely using 'script,' 'dns,' and 'url' lookups to achieve arbitrary remote code execution," the Zscaler ThreatLabZ team explained . A  successful exploitation of the flaw  can enable a threat actor to open a reverse shell conn...

Network-attached storage (NAS) appliance maker QNAP on Thursday said it's investigating its lineup for potential impact arising from two security vulnerabilities that were addressed in the Apache HTTP server last month. The critical flaws, tracked as  CVE-2022-22721 and CVE-2022-23943 , are rated 9.8 for severity on the CVSS scoring system and impact Apache HTTP Server versions 2.4.52 and earlier - CVE-2022-22721  - Possible buffer overflow with very large or unlimited LimitXMLRequestBody CVE-2022-23943  - Out-of-bounds Write vulnerability in mod_sed of Apache HTTP Server Both the vulnerabilities, alongside CVE-2022-22719 and CVE-2022-22720, were remediated by the project maintainers as part of  version 2.4.53 , which was shipped on March 14, 2022. "While CVE-2022-22719 and CVE-2022-22720 do not affect QNAP products, CVE-2022-22721 affects 32-bit QNAP NAS models, and CVE-2022-23943 affects users who have enabled mod_sed in Apache HTTP Server on their QNAP de...

Researchers have revealed details of a now-patched high-severity security vulnerability in Apache Cassandra that, if left unaddressed, could be abused to gain remote code execution (RCE) on affected installations. "This Apache security vulnerability is easy to exploit and has the potential to wreak havoc on systems, but luckily only manifests in non-default configurations of Cassandra," Omer Kaspi, security researcher at DevOps firm JFrog,  said  in a technical write-up published Tuesday. Apache Cassandra is an open-source, distributed, NoSQL database management system for managing very large amounts of structured data across commodity servers. Tracked as  CVE-2021-44521  (CVSS score: 8.4), the vulnerability concerns a specific scenario where the configuration for user-defined functions ( UDFs ) are enabled, effectively allowing an attacker to leverage the  Nashorn  JavaScript engine, escape the sandbox, and achieve execution of untrusted code. Speci...

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) on Tuesday rolled out fresh patches to contain an arbitrary code execution flaw in Log4j that could be abused by threat actors to run malicious code on affected systems, making it the fifth security shortcoming to be discovered in the tool in the span of a month. Tracked as  CVE-2021-44832 , the vulnerability is rated 6.6 in severity on a scale of 10 and impacts all versions of the logging library from 2.0-alpha7 to 2.17.0 with the exception of 2.3.2 and 2.12.4. While Log4j versions 1.x are not affected, users are recommended to upgrade to Log4j 2.3.2 (for Java 6), 2.12.4 (for Java 7), or 2.17.1 (for Java 8 and later). "Apache Log4j2 versions 2.0-beta7 through 2.17.0 (excluding security fix releases 2.3.2 and 2.12.4) are vulnerable to a remote code execution (RCE) attack where an attacker with permission to modify the logging configuration file can construct a malicious configuration using a JDBC Appender with a data source referencing a JND...

UPDATE — The severity score of CVE-2021-45046, originally classified as a DoS bug, has since been revised from 3.7 to 9.0, to reflect the fact that an attacker could abuse the vulnerability to send a specially crafted string that leads to "information leak and remote code execution in some environments and local code execution in all environments." The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has pushed out a new fix for the Log4j logging utility after the previous patch for the recently disclosed  Log4Shell  exploit was deemed as "incomplete in certain non-default configurations." The second vulnerability — tracked as  CVE-2021-45046  — is rated 3.7 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSS rating system and affects all versions of Log4j from 2.0-beta9 through 2.12.1 and 2.13.0 through 2.15.0, which the project maintainers shipped last week to address a critical remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) that could be abused to infiltrate and take over systems. ...