remote code execution | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Updated July 18, 2026: the two flaws now carry CVE IDs, the full mechanism has been published, a persistent-object-cache condition has surfaced, and a working proof-of-concept is public. The story below reflects all of it. An anonymous HTTP request can run code on a WordPress site. The bug is in core, so a bare install with zero plugins is exploitable. Every 6.9 and 7.0 site was in range until Friday, when WordPress shipped 6.9.5 and 7.0.2 and enabled what it calls forced updates through its auto-update system. wp2shell is two bugs, not one, and both now carry CVE IDs. CVE-2026-63030 is the REST API batch-route confusion; CVE-2026-60137 is a SQL injection in WordPress core. Chained, they take an anonymous request all the way to code execution. Since Friday, the full mechanism has been published, and a working proof-of-concept has gone up on GitHub. Adam Kues at Assetnote, Searchlight Cyber's attack surface management arm, found the batch-route bug and reported it throug...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a newly patched security flaw impacting Microsoft SharePoint Server to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, requiring Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to apply the fixes by July 19, 2026. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-58644 (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical deserialization of untrusted data vulnerability that allows an unauthorized attacker to execute arbitrary code. "In a network-based attack, an attacker authenticated as at least a Site Owner, could write arbitrary code to inject and execute code remotely on the SharePoint Server," Microsoft said in an advisory released earlier this week. Redmond noted that the vulnerability is remotely exploitable over the internet, warning that the attack complexity is low for two reasons - An attacker does not require significant prior knowledge of the system An attacker can achieve repeatable su...

Pull the certificate off the flash of a Shark RV2320EDUS robot vacuum, and you can run root commands on other people's Shark vacuums across the same AWS region: watch the camera, drive the robot, read the map of the house, and take the Wi-Fi password in plaintext. A researcher publishing under the handle tokay0  put the method online  on Monday, having tested it only against vacuums he bought himself. The flaw was unpatched then. He says SharkNinja, the company behind the Shark and Ninja appliance brands, has had his report since March. The policy attached to that certificate was never scoped to the device holding it. Present it to Shark's cloud broker, and the broker accepts whatever you publish, addressed to any device it serves. No memory corruption, no privilege escalation, no password to guess. The command that runs is an ordinary field in the device shadow, the per-device state document AWS keeps in the cloud. Using the certificate from an RV2320EDUS, the rese...

Mozilla has released updates to address two critical flaws in Firefox for which it warned that exploit code has been published. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2026-15718 , an invalid pointer in the JavaScript: WebAssembly component CVE-2026-15719 , a site isolation in the DOM: Navigation component "We are aware that exploit code for this is public, however we are not aware of any attacks in the wild abusing this flaw," Mozilla said in an advisory. Both vulnerabilities have been addressed in Firefox version 152.0.6. The release comes as Google shipped fixes for 15 security flaws, including two critical use-after-free bugs in Ozone ( CVE-2026-15764 and CVE-2026-15765 ), a cross-platform abstraction layer that allows the browser to interact natively with various display servers and windowing systems. It supports Linux, ChromeOS, and Fuchsia. "Use after free in Ozone in Google Chrome on Linux prior to 150.0.7871.125 allowed a remote attacker...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added two maximum-severity security flaws impacting iCagenda and Balbooa extensions for Joomla to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, following reports of zero-day exploitation in the wild. The vulnerabilities, both rated 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system, are below - CVE-2026-48939 - A vulnerability in the iCagenda extension for Joomla that allows the upload of arbitrary files via the file attachment feature, leading to PHP code upload and execution. CVE-2026-56291 - A vulnerability in the Balbooa Forms extension for Joomla that allows the upload of arbitrary files, leading to remote code execution. According to mySites.guru, a cloud-based dashboard service for managing WordPress and Joomla websites, CVE-2026-48939 is said to have been exploited as a zero-day since June 15, 2026, in automated attacks aimed at Joomla sites on which iCagenda is installed. It resides in the "Submit an...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added four security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2026-48282 (CVSS score: 10.0) - A path traversal vulnerability in Adobe ColdFusion that could lead to arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user. CVE-2026-56290 (CVSS score: 10.0) - An improper access control vulnerability in Joomlack Page Builder that could allow for remote code execution via unauthenticated arbitrary file upload. CVE-2026-55255 (CVSS score: 6.1) - An authorization bypass through a user-controlled key vulnerability in Langflow that could allow an authenticated attacker to execute any flow belonging to another user by specifying the victim's flow ID in the request. CVE-2026-48908 (CVSS score: 10.0) - An unrestricted upload of a file with a dangerous type vulnerability in JoomShaper SP P...

A suspected China-aligned threat activity cluster has been observed exploiting Roundcube webmail software belonging to physics and engineering departments of U.S. and Canadian universities as part of a new campaign. The activity involves the exploitation of now-patched, critical security flaws in the open-source email solution, such as CVE-2024-42009 (CVSS score: 9.3), to siphon credentials, followed by either the deployment of a web shell for persistent access or a known post-exploitation tool called VShell . The emerging threat cluster is being tracked by Proofpoint under the moniker UNK_MassTraction . It was first detected in May 2026, specifically focusing on administrators and professors in departments with either national security ties or entities studying astrophysics and particle physics. "The emails targeting university departments used both compromised senders, as well as abused domains vulnerable to spoofing due to lax DMARC policy to send the emails," the ...

Security firm Sysdig says it has found what it believes is the first ransomware attack run from start to finish by an AI agent. Its Threat Research Team calls the operator JADEPUFFER and says a large language model handled the whole job: breaking in, stealing credentials, moving deeper into the network, then encrypting and wiping a company's production database. Ransomware has always needed a skilled person somewhere in the loop, either at the keyboard or writing the script the malware follows. If a model can chain those steps on its own, the skill needed to run an attack drops to whatever it costs to rent an AI agent. The way in was an old, already-patched bug. JADEPUFFER exploited  CVE-2025-3248 , a missing-authentication flaw in  Langflow , an open-source tool for building AI apps and agent workflows. The flaw lets anyone who can reach the server run their own Python code on it, no login needed. Langflow boxes are a tempting target because they often sit ...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday added a high-severity flaw impacting Microsoft SharePoint Server to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-45659 (CVSS score: 8.8), is a case of remote code execution arising from the deserialization of untrusted data. The issue was addressed by Microsoft in May 2026 for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, SharePoint Server 2019, and SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016. Microsoft noted that any authenticated attacker could trigger the vulnerability, and that it does not require admin or other elevated privileges. In a network-based attack, an authenticated attacker with a minimum of Site Member permissions (PR:L) could leverage it to execute code remotely on the SharePoint Server. "Microsoft SharePoint Server contains a deserialization of untrusted data vulnerability which allows an authorized attacker t...

A recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting Progress Kemp LoadMaster is seeing active exploitation attempts, according to an advisory from eSentire's Threat Response Unit (TRU). The Canadian cybersecurity company said it identified exploitation attempts targeting CVE-2026-8037 (CVSS score: 9.6), an operating system (OS) command injection flaw that could be exploited to achieve arbitrary code execution on susceptible devices. The exploitation activity commenced on June 29, 2026. "OS Command Injection Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in API in Progress LoadMaster allows an unauthenticated attacker with permissions to execute arbitrary commands on the LoadMaster appliance by exploiting unsanitized input," Progress said in an advisory for the vulnerability released early last month. In an analysis published this week, watchTowr Labs described the flaw as rooted in a function named "escape_quotes()" within the load balancer application and tha...

Threat actors are continuing to exploit a critical Langflow vulnerability as part of fresh attacks designed to deliver a Monero cryptocurrency miner. The activity has been found to weaponize CVE-2026-33017 (CVSS score: 9.3), an unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Langflow, indicating threat actors are scanning and targeting exposed artificial intelligence (AI) application endpoints for obtaining initial access to enterprise networks. The attack was observed over a 19-day window between March 27 and April 15, 2026. "In this campaign, a single line of Python code evaluated inside an unauthenticated Langflow API endpoint pulls down a shell script, fetches a miner binary, and launches it detached," Trend Micro researchers Simon Dulude and John Zhang said in a technical report published last week. At a high level, the malware is designed to terminate competing cryptocurrency miner processes associated with Kinsing , WatchDog , Rocke , and Outlaw ,...

A critical vulnerability in Progress Kemp LoadMaster can let an unauthenticated attacker execute arbitrary commands as root on the appliance by sending a crafted request to its API. The flaw, tracked as  CVE-2026-8037 , carries a CVSS score of  9.8 according to ZDI . A patch is available. If you run LoadMaster with the API enabled, update now. Progress  published its advisory on June 4  and says it has not received any reports of exploitation. On June 29, researchers at watchTowr Labs published a detailed technical write-up that walks through the full exploit chain. What the Flaw Does LoadMaster is an application delivery controller and load balancer used by enterprises to manage traffic across servers. It sits at the network edge, which makes any pre-auth flaw in it especially dangerous. The vulnerability lives in a function called  escape_quotes() , which is supposed to sanitize user input before it gets passed into a shell command. The f...

Microsoft has shut down a long-running malicious extension operation on the Edge Add-ons store that hid its payloads inside ordinary image and font files, then woke up days after install to steal credentials and run ad fraud. The company calls it  StegoAd , a mash-up of steganography and adware, and ties 119 extensions to a single threat actor it says has been active since at least 2021. The extensions were the kind people install without a second thought: ad blockers, VPNs, translators, video downloaders. Each one did its job and earned reviews. The malicious code stayed dormant until the extension cleared a stack of evasion checks, which is how it sat in the store for years. Combined, the 119 extensions had an install base of up to 2.6 million users. Microsoft is clear that this is a ceiling, not a victim count. A multi-day delay, server-side validation, and a 10% execution gate on some variants meant the payload never fired for many installs. How many people were actual...

A public proof-of-concept is now out for CVE-2026-55200 , a critical flaw in libssh2 that lets a malicious or compromised SSH server trigger memory corruption on a connecting client, with possible code execution. No credentials, no user interaction. The bug affects every release up to and including 1.11.1 and carries a CVSS 4.0 score of 9.2 . libssh2 is a client-side SSH library, not a server. That distinction matters. It is embedded in curl, Git, PHP, backup agents, firmware updaters, and a long tail of appliances. Anything that links it and reaches out to an untrusted SSH endpoint is a potential target. Many of those copies are statically linked, so a distro package update will not touch them, and you may not know they are there. How the bug works The flaw lives in ssh2_transport_read() in transport.c, the function that parses incoming SSH packets during the handshake. It read the attacker-controlled packet_length field and rejected only values belo...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a critical remote code execution vulnerability impacting PTC Windchill PDMlink and PTC FlexPLM enterprise Product Data Management (PDM) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-12569 (CVSS score: 9.3), a case of improper input validation that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code by sending a malicious request to the network.  "The vulnerability is a remote code execution (RCE) issue that may be exploited through deserialization of untrusted data," according to an advisory released by PTC. Although patches for the flaw were released last week, PTC has since confirmed, as of June 25, that "we've received continued reports of heightened threat activity," with the company disclosing that unknown attackers are exploiting ...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday warned of active exploitation of a critical security flaw impacting Lantronix EDS5000 Series devices, urging Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to apply the fixes by June 26, 2026. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-67038 (CVSS score: 9.8), a code injection flaw that could result in the execution of arbitrary commands with elevated privileges. "The HTTP RPC module executes a shell command to write logs when the user's authentication fails," according to the vulnerability's description on CVE.org. "The username is directly concatenated with the command without any sanitization. This allows attackers to inject arbitrary OS commands into the username parameter. Injected commands are executed with root privileges." The security flaw was disclosed by Forescout Research Vedere Labs in April 2026 as part of a broader set of vulnerabilities collectively cod...

Microsoft researchers have detailed an exploit chain, named  AutoJack , that turns an AI browsing agent into a delivery vehicle for remote code execution. Steer the agent to load an attacker's web page, and that page's JavaScript can reach a privileged local service on the same machine and spawn a process on the host. No credentials, no sign-in screen, and no further user interaction once the agent loads the page. The attacker only has to get the agent to open it, and a planted link, a URL field, or a prompt injection will do. The flaw sits in  AutoGen Studio , the open-source prototyping interface for Microsoft Research's AutoGen multi-agent framework. This is not a bug that hits everyone who installs the package, and the packaging detail is worth getting right. A plain pip install autogenstudio pulls the current stable release, 0.4.2.2, the build Microsoft inspected, and it has no Model Context Protocol (MCP) route at all. That is the basis for Microsoft...

F5 has released security updates to address two critical security flaws in NGINX Open Source that could be exploited to achieve code execution on affected systems. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2026-42530 (CVSS v4 score: 9.2) - A use-after-free vulnerability in the ngx_http_v3_module that could be triggered by a remote unauthenticated attacker when NGINX Open Source is configured to use the HTTP/3 QUIC module to reopen a QPACK encoder stream by means of a specially crafted HTTP/3 session, and execute code on systems with Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) disabled or when the attacker can bypass ASLR. CVE-2026-42055 (CVSS v4 score: 9.2) - A heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the ngx_http_proxy_v2_module and ngx_http_grpc_module modules that could be triggered by a remote unauthenticated attacker when the proxy_http_version to 2 or grpc_pass directives are used to proxy HTTP/2 traffic, the ignore_invalid_headers directive is set to off, and the ...

A default low-privilege account on a LiteLLM proxy can climb to full admin and run code on the server by chaining three vulnerabilities, researchers at Obsidian Security disclosed LiteLLM is a widely deployed open-source AI gateway that brokers calls to more than 100 model providers behind one OpenAI-compatible interface. A server takeover exposes every provider key it holds, the secrets that decrypt its stored credentials, and every prompt and response passing through it. Obsidian rates the full chain CVSS 9.9, in the Critical range. BerriAI , the maintainer, included the complete fix set in LiteLLM v1.83.14-stable, which GitHub lists as released May 2. Upgrade to that release or later to close the three-CVE chain. The three bugs The first link is CVE-2026-47101 , an authorization bypass. When a regular user (an internal_user) generates a virtual API key, LiteLLM stores the caller-supplied allowed_routes field without checking it against the user's role. The field is...

Splunk has released security updates to address a critical security flaw in Splunk Enterprise that could be exploited to conduct unauthenticated file operations and even remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20253 , is rated 9.8 on the CVSS scoring system. "In Splunk Enterprise versions below 10.2.4 and 10.0.7, an unauthenticated user could create or truncate arbitrary files through a PostgreSQL sidecar service endpoint," Splunk said in an alert this week. "The vulnerability exists because the PostgreSQL sidecar service endpoint lacks authentication controls, allowing any network-reachable user to invoke file operations without credentials." The issue has been addressed in the following versions - Splunk Enterprise 10.0.0 to 10.0.6 - Fixed in 10.0.7 Splunk Enterprise 10.2.0 to 10.2.3 - Fixed in 10.2.4 Splunk Enterprise 10.4 - Not affected Splunk, which is part of Cisco, said Splunk Cloud is not impacted by the vulnera...