⚡ THE ONE THING TODAY
Inventory your customer firewalls (PAN-OS, FortiGate, FortiWeb) and web infrastructure (PHP, GitLab) right now and segment by criticality — then start outbound calls before your ticket queue explodes.
WARNING: PHP Emergency RCE Patches (CVE-2026-109618 & CVE-2026-109619) — Active Exploitation Attempts Observed
PHP released emergency fixes on October 21, 2026, for two critical unauthenticated remote code execution flaws (CVSS 9.2 each): CVE-2026-109618 (out-of-memory corruption) and CVE-2026-109619 (stale global state). watchTowr confirmed active exploitation attempts in the wild as of October 21, though no confirmed successful breaches have been reported. Workaround: Update to PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, or 8.2.35 immediately; for CVE-2026-109619 set session.upload_progress.enabled=0 and restart workers if patching is delayed.
WARNING: GitLab CVE-2026-110264 — Critical Unauthenticated RCE Affecting All Versions Back to 7.0 (2014)
GitLab patched CVE-2026-110264 (CVSS 10.0) on October 21, 2026 — an integer overflow in the regex compiler exploitable without authentication, affecting every GitLab CE/EE version from 7.0 onward. Organisations that patched the previous October 12 critical (CVE-2026-97229) are still exposed to this new flaw. Workaround: Update to the latest GitLab CE/EE release immediately; restrict public network access to GitLab instances as an interim measure.
CRITICAL: PHP2Shell Hits All PAN-OS & Panorama Versions — No Fix Shipped Yet; Fortinet Investigating 12 Products
Palo Alto Networks confirmed on October 22, 2026, that all versions of PAN-OS and Panorama are affected by PHP2Shell (CVE-2026-109618/CVE-2026-109619), critical unauthenticated RCE flaws, with no fixed PAN-OS releases yet available. Risk is highest when management interfaces are exposed to the internet. Workaround: Restrict PAN-OS management interface access to trusted internal IPs only; apply Threat ID 543004 (Frontier Virtual Patching) and IPS signatures 97622–97625 for interim protection.
CRITICAL: Active Campaign Targeting FortiGate, FortiWeb & Palo Alto GlobalProtect — 70,000+ Credentials Exposed
Group-IB and NyxLab published findings on October 21, 2026, identifying threat actor 'k0t' actively breaking into FortiGate, FortiWeb, and Palo Alto GlobalProtect systems using a mix of exploits and credential attacks, with over 70,000 credentials including LDAP and AD details exposed. FortiWeb is exploited via CVE-2025-64446 (path traversal, unauthenticated admin command execution), and GlobalProtect via CVE-2026-0257 (authentication bypass). Workaround: Immediately audit admin accounts, rotate all credentials, restrict management interface exposure, and check FortiGate configs for use of default encryption keys.
Subscribers also get the full “From the Floor” take with every issue — not just the summary you just read.
Written from 12 years on the helpdesk floor. Always free.