The vulnerability landscape shifted significantly in Q2 2026. First, the number of registered CVEs reached an unprecedented level. This is driven primarily by the widespread adoption of AI, both for application development and search for security flaws. This resulted in entire new classes of vulnerabilities emerging, particularly in the Linux networking subsystem. Second, security researchers have been publishing exploits for unpatched vulnerabilities more frequently. Publications like these can generate significant fallout, since they potentially open the door for attackers to target unprotected systems. Statistics on registered vulnerabilities This section provides statistical data on registered vulnerabilities. The data comes from Kaspersky’s vulnerability knowledge base, which draws on the CVE database as well as the Russian BDU database and GitHub Advisory (GHSA). As a result, the figures for previous reporting periods may differ from those published in earlier reports. We examine the number of registered vulnerabilities for each month over the last five years. As the chart below shows, this number continues to surge, a trend reflected across all the databases we track. It’s driven primarily by the widespread adoption of AI tools: as we predicted in our previous report, these tools have played a major role in the discovery of vulnerabilities in third-party software. Meanwhile, these tools often contain security issues of their own. For example, OpenClaw, a popular AI project, ranked 12th among those with the highest number of vulnerabilities discovered and published in Q2, with over 200 CVEs registered during the reporting period. Finally, AI development tools are also contributing to the vulnerability landscape, since the quality of the code they produce can vary widely. Therefore, the rate at which new vulnerabilities are discovered will inevitably keep growing. Total published vulnerabilities per month from 2022 through 2026 (download) Next, we analyze the number of new critical vulnerabilities (CVSS > 9.0) over the same period. Total critical vulnerabilities published per month from 2022 through 2026 (download) As the chart shows, the number of published critical vulnerabilities jumped sharply in Q2. This is because using AI for vulnerability research makes it possible to analyze massive amounts of previously unexamined code, uncover new attack surfaces, and identify entire classes of vulnerabilities that have gone unnoticed for decades. In particular, AI was used to find a series of Dirty Frag vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel. Exploitation statistics This section presents statistics on vulnerability exploitation for Q2 2026. The data draws on open sources and our telemetry. Windows and Linux vulnerability exploitation Q2 2026 saw a new precedent in the publication of vulnerabilities in Windows components and exploits for these: researchers no longer waiting for CVE registration, let alone patches. A case in point: a researcher who goes by Nightmare Eclipse (also known as Chaotic Eclipse) published a list of new “named” vulnerabilities across various Windows subsystems. At the time the technical details were published, none of the vulnerabilities had been assigned a CVE identifier: BlueHammer: a local privilege escalation vulnerability in Windows Defender. During signature database updates, a time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition occurs, allowing an attacker to substitute the directory where temporary update files are written. The researcher published a fully functional exploit for the vulnerability. RedSun: another logical vulnerability in Windows Defender with a working exploit. Suspicious and malicious files marked as “cloud” can be overwritten or restored to their original directory with elevated privileges. The exploit incorporates fragments of algorithms that make it possible to leverage various logical vulnerabilities in Windows, effectively combining a large number of popular exploitation techniques. YellowKey: a vulnerability that lets the user bypass BitLocker full-disk encryption and access system data through the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). A fully functional exploit was also published. GreenPlasma: a vulnerability that enables system object injection via the CTF loader for the Collaborative Translation Framework (CTFMON) service in Windows. The original publication included an exploit with limited functionality. RougePlanet: yet another Windows Defender vulnerability that, like BlueHammer, stems from a TOCTOU issue, this time in the engine responsible for real-time system scanning. The published exploit uses the vulnerability to overwrite the system file wermgr.exe with a malicious one. UnDefend: another vulnerability in the Windows Defender service. This time, the exploit causes a denial of service and blocks updates. Even though such cases remain isolated for now, we believe they’ll grow into a full-fledged trend. Early publication of exploits gives attackers an advantage over software developers, who are left with no time to fix the issues. Veteran vulnerabilities in Windows software also remain relevant. These are the ones our solutions most frequently detect exploits for: CVE-2018-0802: a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the Equation Editor component CVE-2017-11882: another RCE vulnerability also affecting Equation Editor CVE-2017-0199: a vulnerability in Microsoft Office and WordPad that allows an attacker to gain control over the system CVE-2023-38831: a vulnerability in WinRAR that involves improper handling of objects within an archive CVE-2025-6218 (formerly ZDI-CAN-27198): another WinRAR vulnerability allowing the specification of relative paths to extract files into arbitrary directories, potentially leading to malicious command execution CVE-2025-8088: a vulnerability similar in exploitation method to CVE-2025-6218. The attackers used NTFS Streams to circumvent controls on the directory into which files are being unpacked The vulnerabilities listed here can be leveraged to gain initial access to a vulnerable system and for privilege escalation. This underscores the critical importance of timely software updates. That said, the number of Windows users who encountered exploits declined slightly in Q2, hitting an 18-month low. Dynamics of the number of Windows users encountering exploits, Q1 2025 – Q2 2026. The number of users who encountered exploits in Q1 2025 is taken as 100% (download) Linux also hit a rough patch in Q2 2026. Specifically, the period saw the disclosure of the Dirty Frag family of vulnerabilities, which lets an attacker reliably escalate privileges within the operating system. All the vulnerabilities published in Q2 2026 were, in one way or another, related to the Linux caching subsystem. Here are the ones being most actively exploited: CVE-2026-31431 (Copy Fail): a local privilege escalation vulnerability in the Linux kernel that lets an unprivileged user modify the page cache and gain root privileges. Especially dangerous for cloud and containerized environments CVE-2026-43284, CVE-2026-43500 (Dirty Frag): a family of vulnerabilities in the Linux networking subsystem (IPsec ESP and RxRPC) that lets a local user overwrite the page cache and escalate privileges to root CVE-2026-46300 (Fragnesia): a local privilege escalation vulnerability in the Linux kernel related to packet fragment handling and the page cache mechanism. It lets an unprivileged user gain root privileges and is also classified as part of the Dirty Frag family CVE-2026-31635 (DirtyDecrypt): a Linux kernel vulnerability that lets a local attacker escalate privileges due to improper handling of decryption operations and page cache data modification CVE-2026-43494 (PinTheft): a Linux kernel vulnerability that lets a local user gain elevated privileges due to errors in the memory page pinning mechanism CVE-2026-46331 (pedit COW): a vulnerability in the Linux kernel’s traffic control subsystem (tc-pedit) that exploits a flaw in copy-on-write to modify the page cache and subsequently escalate privileges to root The vulnerabilities described above were quickly embraced by attackers. At the same time, our solutions continue to detect exploitation attempts targeting older vulnerabilities as well: CVE-2022-0847: a vulnerability known as Dirty Pipe, which enables privilege escalation and the hijacking of running applications CVE-2019-13272: a vulnerability caused by improper handling of privilege inheritance, which can be exploited to achieve privilege escalation CVE-2021-22555: a heap out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the Netfilter kernel subsystem CVE-2023-32233: another Netfilter subsystem vulnerability that allows for Use-After-Free conditions and privilege escalation through improper processing of network requests Dynamics of the number of Linux users encountering exploits, Q1 2025 – Q2 2026. The number of users who encountered exploits in Q1 2025 is taken as 100% (download) In Q2 2026, the number of Linux users who encountered exploits declined slightly compared to Q1. Given that a significant share of new vulnerabilities are tied to the operating system’s caching subsystem, we recommend installing patches as quickly as possible, or disabling vulnerable kernel modules if patching isn’t an option. Most common published exploits The distribution of published exploits by software type in Q2 2026 includes categories that haven’t appeared in the sample for a long time. For instance, we’re once again seeing exploits targeting SharePoint. It’s worth noting that while several vulnerability write-ups for Exchange and SharePoint were published during the quarter, most turned out to be fake, AI-generated research. While the articles and exploit source code themselves look fairly polished, they describe nonexistent problems in the software or its components — often close to genuinely vulnerable mechanisms — in order to mislead researchers. This type of attack is aimed at increasing the time it takes to detect real vulnerabilities. In some cases, the description of a nonexistent vulnerability came bundled with completely unrelated malware. Distribution of published exploits by platform, Q1 2026 (download) Distribution of published exploits by platform, Q2 2026 (download) Vulnerability exploitation in APT attacks We analyzed which vulnerabilities were exploited in APT attacks during Q2 2026. The rankings provided below include data based on our telemetry, research, and open sources. TOP 10 vulnerabilities exploited in APT attacks, Q2 2026 (download) In Q2 2026, a trend emerged in APT attacks toward exploiting new vulnerabilities right from the moment they’re published. As before, we’re also seeing a large number of zero-day vulnerabilities. The Langflow vulnerability deserves particular attention: it’s one of the first cases of an APT group exploiting AI technology, which many organizations are only just beginning to integrate. Because most of this tech is proprietary, it has a considerable number of security blind spots. Therefore, given the growing number of AI-based automation tools, we strongly recommend going beyond the usual patching and developing secure procedures for credential use and sensitive data handling in systems that rely on agents and LLMs. C2 frameworks In this section, we examine the most popular C2 frameworks used by APT groups and analyze the vulnerabilities targeted by the exploits that interacted with C2 agents in APT attacks. The chart below shows the frequency of known C2 framework usage in attacks during Q2 2026, according to open sources. TOP 10 C2 frameworks used by APTs to compromise user systems, Q2 2026 (download) Sliver, Havoc, AdaptixC2, and Metasploit remain the most widely used C2 frameworks. After studying open sources and analyzing samples of malicious C2 agents that contained exploits, we determined that the following vulnerabilities were utilized in APT attacks involving the C2 frameworks mentioned above: CVE-2026-35273: a vulnerability in Oracle PeopleSoft PeopleTools that security vendors classify as server-side request forgery (SSRF). The details of the vulnerability have never been disclosed, although some research covers the post-exploitation steps CVE-2023-46604: an insecure deserialization vulnerability in Apache ActiveMQ that allows arbitrary code execution in the context of the service process CVE-2024-12356 and CVE-2026-1731: command injection vulnerabilities in BeyondTrust software that allow an attacker to send malicious commands even without system authentication CVE-2023-36884: a vulnerability in the Windows Search component that allows commands to be run on the system, bypassing the mark-of-the-web (MoTW) mechanism CVE-2025-53770: an insecure deserialization vulnerability in Microsoft SharePoint that allows for unauthenticated command execution on the server CVE-2025-8088 and CVE-2025-6218: similar directory traversal vulnerabilities in WinRAR that allow files to be extracted from an archive to a predetermined path, potentially without the archiving utility displaying any alerts to the user These vulnerabilities show that attackers used them for initial access and privilege escalation on vulnerable systems, setting the stage for launching a C2 agent. They include both zero-day vulnerabilities and fairly well-known security issues. LLM/AI tool vulnerabilities This section analyzes data published in Kaspersky’s vulnerability knowledge base. We reviewed the Q2 2026 version of the knowledge base. As mentioned above, AI tools, plugins, and technologies have proven fairly effective at automating the search for problematic code and anomalous behavior. The high speed at which new vulnerabilities are being discovered has naturally created a need to fix them just as quickly. AI is often used for this too, which increases the volume of code being generated. However, neither code written without human involvement nor AI-generated advice is always correct. The chart below covers registered vulnerabilities in AI tools for 2025–2026. Number of published vulnerabilities in LLMs, AI tools, and plugins with similar functionality, 2025–2026 (download) As the charts show, AI tools are racking up a substantial number of registered vulnerabilities, and that number keeps growing quarter over quarter. It’s also worth looking at how AI tool vulnerabilities break down by type, according to the CWE system: TOP 6 vulnerability types in products that implement or use AI/LLM logic, 2025–2026 Interestingly, vulnerabilities of an undetermined type have ranked first in every quarter since the start of 2025. Traditionally-made software has the same issue, and it doesn’t look like the growing number of AI tools will fix it. It’s also notable that the list includes classes CWE developers themselves don’t recommend using for vulnerability classification, since they lump together a whole range of more specific types. CWE-284 is an example of this. Looking at the most common classes, the key issues found in AI-related software can be summed up as follows: Inadequate access control over critical system objects Improper implementation of authentication and authorization mechanisms Injections It’s worth noting that injection-related vulnerabilities were relatively rare before AI agents took off (previously, they mostly affected web apps). Recently, though, these security issues have become relevant again. Looking back at a year and a half of the AI boom, one conclusion stands out regarding registered vulnerabilities: AI tool developers are more focused on expanding functionality than on security. This is worth keeping in mind when using these tools. Let’s look at the projects and applications that either integrated AI tools or offered them as the core product. Below is a list of the those with the highest number of registered vulnerabilities for 2025–2026. TOP AI/LLM-related projects by number of published vulnerabilities, 2025–2026 (download) Notable vulnerabilities This section highlights the most significant vulnerabilities published in Q2 2026 that have publicly available descriptions. Since the above already covers several significant vulnerabilities published during the reporting period, this section consists mainly of LLM/AI tool vulnerabilities. CVE-2026-25253: a gatewayUrl vulnerability in OpenClaw The issue stems from the fact that the OpenClaw user interface trusts the value of the gatewayUrl parameter passed in the URL and automatically establishes a WebSocket connection to the specified address. During this connection process, it sends an authentication token without any additional user confirmation. The attack algorithm exploiting this vulnerability works as follows: The application obtains a critical connection address from an external source (the gatewayUrl URL parameter), which is controlled by the attacker. There is no validation before use. The client automatically initiates a connection to the address specified in the parameter, which belongs to the attacker. While connected, the application sends credentials (an access token) to the specified address. If the attacker obtains a valid token, the consequences depend on that token’s level of access within the system. In general, this could lead to: User session compromise Execution of operations on the user’s behalf Modification of the AI agent configuration Unauthorized access to tools and resources connected to the agent Under certain OpenClaw configurations, further compromise of the host running the agent It’s worth noting that the risk of exploitation arises from a combination of several factors: the automatic connection and token transmission, the lack of address trust verification, and the high privileges granted to the local AI agent. CVE-2026-41948: a path traversal vulnerability in the Dify AI platform The vulnerability lets an authenticated user craft a request that enables the application to escape its permitted tenant and gain access to internal REST APIs that weren’t meant for that user. The root cause is insufficient normalization and validation of the URL path before it’s passed to the internal service. Depending on the Dify configuration, the consequences can include: Unauthorized access to internal service interfaces Breach of isolation between workspaces Exposure of internal service information Conditions favorable to further attacks when combined with other vulnerabilities The use of Dify in enterprise AI platforms is particularly risky, since internal services there tend to hold elevated privileges. CVE-2026-45386: an improper access control vulnerability in Open WebUI In Open WebUI, pin/unpin operations on messages are write operations, since they modify that message’s metadata (is_pinned, pinned_by, pinned_at). In vulnerable versions, however, before performing these actions, the API only checked for read access to the channel (a chat between a user or group and the AI) containing the message, not permission to modify its content. As a result, a user with a role limited to viewing messages could still change a message’s pinned status. The vulnerability’s mechanism works as follows: The user initiates an action that changes the state of an object. The application treats this action as a regular read request. Only channel view permission is checked. The application performs a write without verifying the required user authorization. This violates one of the fundamental principles of access control models — namely, that any operation that changes the state of data must be checked for the appropriate write or moderation permissions, regardless of whether the object itself is readable. Although the vulnerability doesn’t lead to arbitrary code execution or compromise of sensitive data, it can affect data integrity and collaborative workflows. Potential consequences of exploitation include unauthorized pinning or unpinning of messages, disruption of channel moderators’ and administrators’ activities, changes to the display order of important information, and even the potential spread of false or misleading information by altering the channel containing a pinned message. Open WebUI is widely used as an interface for interacting with local and enterprise LLMs. In these systems, pinned messages often contain important instructions, announcements, or tips for users. The ability to modify them with minimal privileges can disrupt collaborative workflows, cause confusion, and undermine trust in information published by administrators and moderators. CVE-2026-45501: a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange The vulnerability stems from improper neutralization of user input when generating Exchange web pages. As a result, the browser may interpret specially crafted data as active content instead of plain text. Although Microsoft categorizes the potential impact of exploiting this vulnerability as spoofing, flaws like this can lead to alteration of displayed content, imitation of trusted interfaces, actions on behalf of the user within an active session, and abuse of user trust. It’s worth noting that issues like this are still relevant in modern software, given that mechanisms like Content Security Policy and various parsers were specifically created to help developers neutralize dangerous parts of user page content. Conclusion and advice Q2 brought the first significant results of AI automation adoption in software development and vulnerability hunting tools. This research shows that beyond traditional patch management, organizations now need real-time monitoring of systems and access controls, since infrastructure and everyday applications now contain far more AI functionality that could lead to compromise. Accordingly, besides quickly detecting infrastructure vulnerabilities and managing security patches, modern enterprise-grade security solutions need to provide a broad range of preventive measures for tracking the overall health of systems and workstations. Kaspersky Next meets these requirements by combining proactive mechanisms with the ability to respond promptly to emerging threats.
U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds Gitea flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added an Oracle HTTP Server and Oracle Weblogic Server Proxy Plug-in flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-60004 (CVSS score of 9,8), to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. Gitea is an open-source platform for hosting and managing Git repositories. Think of it as a self-hosted alternative to GitHub or GitLab. CVE-2026-60004 is a critical remote code execution flaw that allows an attacker with write access to a repository to execute arbitrary shell commands as the Gitea service user. The flaw affects Gitea versions from 1.17 and was fixed in 1.27.1. The vulnerable diffpatch API can be abused to plant and execute a malicious Git hook. Because Gitea enables open registration by default, an unauthenticated attacker can create an account, create a repository, and exploit the flaw without existing credentials. A reported attack used the vulnerability to deploy a cryptocurrency-miner-like payload after an exposed Gitea instance allowed open registration and anonymous access to its web interface. According to Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities, FCEB agencies have to address the identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect their networks against attacks exploiting the flaws in the catalog. Experts also recommend that private organizations review the Catalog and address the vulnerabilities in their infrastructure. CISA orders federal agencies to fix the flaw by August 28, 2026. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, CISA)
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced that a breach last year exposed customer and employee information. The museum says that on July 11, 2025, it detected suspicious activity on its systems that had started four days earlier. A month later, the investigation confirmed that the network was compromised. At the time, the type of exposed data could not be determined, and the first results of the investigation became available in late February 2026. More than a year after the discovery of the data breach incident, the museum identified that the following information may have been accessed by the attacker: LACMA says it has notified law enforcement authorities about the incident and sent personalized data breach notifications to impacted individuals. Recipients are recommended to monitor their bank accounts for suspicious activity, consider placing a security freeze or fraud alert on their credit file, and report identity theft attempts to their financial institutions and law enforcement.
Threat actors are abusing npm and its mirrors to host malicious HTML pages that impersonate Cloudflare CAPTCHAs to redirect visitors to attacker-controlled websites. The technique was previously spotted in July by security researcher inf0stache, who found a 'china_airlines' npm package that used a fake Cloudflare verification page to redirect visitors to a malicious domain, and was also reported by IntelFusions. In a later report, OX Security discovered 24 npm packages containing the same malicious HTML page hosted on npm and various mirrors. However, unlike the typical npm supply-chain attacks we've seen lately, installing the packages does not infect a developer's computer with malware or infostealers. Instead, attackers use the npm registry as free storage for malicious HTML pages, which are then copied by mirroring platforms like UNPKG and npmmirror.
A newly uncovered phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform called AnonyMousKIT automates the retrieval of codes used to unlock stolen Apple devices and disable the Activation Lock feature. The illegal service has been active since early 2024 and is powering a structured ecosystem that sells stolen iPhones, harvests Apple IDs, accesses iCloud backups, and Keychain credentials. Researchers at threat intelligence platform SOCRadar took advantage of the platform operator's use of bare relative paths to gather information on how the service works, its operators, and infrastructure. SOCRadar found that AnonyMousKIT is connected to 506 domains and is fueling a sprawling business with 168 storefront brands acting as resellers. The researchers recovered records of 200 calls made to victims between August 2025 and May 2026, using 55 distinct interaction transcripts handled by a voice AI agent operating under five personas.
Norway ’s shared government infrastructure suffered a third DDoS attack, disrupting digital services but showing no signs of data compromise. Norway ‘s shared digital government infrastructure has been hit by another distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that disrupted services used by citizens, businesses and public agencies. The incident began at 03:38 CEST on Monday, August 24, and targeted infrastructure operated by the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency, Digdir, together with its service provider Vivicta. The timing matters because this isn’t an isolated event. Digdir says it’s the third DDoS attack against its services in a short period, following incidents in June and on August 3. “The Norwegian Directorate for Digitalisation (Digdir) has been subjected to a denial of service attack (DDoS attack) that has been ongoing since 03:38 on the night of Monday, August 24.” reads the statement published by Digdir Agency. “This is the third time in a short time that this type of attack has been directed at Digdir’s solutions. Digdir is working closely with our subcontractor Vivicta. NSM and the Norwegian Data Protection Authority have also been notified of the case.” That status update refers to the test environment, but the underlying attack also affected production services. Digdir reported that several shared services became completely unavailable for short periods, while others remained accessible but suffered connection failures, slow responses and longer-than-usual login times. Digdir operates several pieces of Norway’s shared public-sector infrastructure. Among them are ID-porten, MinID, Maskinporten, eFormidling, eInnsyn, the Contact and Reservation Register, Ansattporten and other services used by government agencies and external applications. That makes an attack on Digdir more significant than an ordinary website outage. When a shared authentication service goes down, the disruption can propagate to services that aren’t themselves under attack. That’s exactly what happened. Altinn, Norway’s central platform for communication between citizens, businesses and government, was also affected, while other public services relying on ID-porten experienced login problems. Earlier attacks this summer produced similar effects, including disruption to access to Helsenorge, NAV and Skatteetaten. The technical distinction is important: the attackers didn’t need to break into every downstream service. They could create disruption simply by overwhelming a shared dependency. And that’s often the uncomfortable reality of modern public infrastructure. The weakest point isn’t necessarily the service citizens see on their screens. It can be the common authentication, messaging or data-exchange layer underneath it. Digdir has stressed that the incident is about availability, not evidence of a successful intrusion. The agency also says it has found no indication that personal data was exposed. Digdir has notified Norway’s National Security Authority, NSM, and the Data Protection Authority, Datatilsynet, as part of its response. “There are no indications that the attack has led to a security breach or that personal data has been compromised, says Director Frode Danielsen at Digdir.” continues the statement. That distinction deserves attention because cyberattack doesn’t automatically mean “data theft”. In this case, the confirmed impact is service disruption, while there is currently no evidence that attackers compromised Digdir’s systems or accessed personal information. The operational consequences are still serious. Public-sector users may see failed connections, slow responses or authentication problems even though the underlying applications themselves haven’t been compromised. The June incident already demonstrated how much disruption a DDoS attack against Digdir’s infrastructure can cause. That attack targeted ID-porten through Vivicta’s network infrastructure and temporarily affected services including ID-porten, MinID, Maskinporten, eInnsyn and eFormidling. Another attack followed on August 3. Digdir restored normal operations the following day, but the agency said the incident had again affected several shared services and that it would review the event together with Vivicta and other partners. Now there’s a third incident. That repetition is more interesting from a defensive perspective than the raw duration of any single outage. Digdir and Vivicta are clearly able to mitigate the attacks and restore services. The harder question is whether repeated attacks against the same shared infrastructure can keep generating enough operational friction to become a recurring problem for the wider public sector. This is where DDoS stops being just a bandwidth problem. A sufficiently persistent campaign can force defenders to keep changing traffic controls, filtering rules and protection measures, while legitimate users continue to depend on the same infrastructure. Digdir’s own status updates show that dynamic clearly. On August 24, the agency first reported improvement, then said several solutions were completely down, followed by further stabilization efforts. There is currently no official attribution for the attacks. Norwegian media have raised the possibility of Russian involvement, but that remains speculation rather than an established finding. That distinction matters. A DDoS campaign can be politically motivated, financially motivated, conducted for disruption or simply intended to demonstrate capability. Without technical evidence and an official attribution process, assigning responsibility to a particular state or group would be premature. What is established is the target and the effect. The attacks repeatedly hit infrastructure that sits underneath a large number of Norwegian digital public services. That’s enough to make the incidents strategically relevant without adding an attribution story that the evidence doesn’t yet support. The Norwegian case is also a useful reminder that cybersecurity isn’t limited to confidentiality and integrity. Availability is a security property too, particularly when the affected systems provide national digital services. A compromised database is an obvious security incident. An authentication service that repeatedly becomes unavailable can create a different kind of problem: citizens can’t access services, businesses can’t complete procedures and government agencies may struggle to perform routine operations. Digdir says its services have largely stabilized, although some disruptions remain. As of the latest incident updates, ID-porten still had limitations, eSignering remained unavailable because of those ID-porten restrictions, and some users were still reporting connection problems or increased response times with Maskinporten. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, newsletter)
Two CVSS 9.8 miniOrange SAML WordPress plugin auth bypasses were exploited while paid editions never appeared in any vulnerability database. Manual patch required. Two critical authentication bypass vulnerabilities in the miniOrange SAML 2.0 Single Sign On WordPress plugin, both rated CVSS 9.8, are under active exploitation. Both CVE-2026-61979 and CVE-2026-15981 allow an unauthenticated attacker to forge a SAML authentication response and arrive in /wp-admin as any existing user, including administrators. The bugs are independent and both have been confirmed exploited in the wild. CVE-2026-61979 is an algorithm confusion flaw. The plugin trusts the incoming SAML response to declare its own signature algorithm. An attacker sets that algorithm to HMAC-SHA1, which causes the plugin to use the identity provider’s RSA public key as the HMAC secret. The RSA public key is, by definition, public. That’s the whole attack: fetch the key from the metadata endpoint, sign your own forged assertion with it, and the plugin verifies it as genuine. CVE-2026-15981 is a PHP bug caused by incorrectly handling different types of values. The openssl_verify() function can return three results: 1 when a signature is valid, 0 when it is invalid, and -1 when OpenSSL encounters an error. The plugin treated the result like a simple true-or-false value. In PHP, -1 counts as true. An attacker can send a specially crafted signature that causes an OpenSSL error, making the function return -1. The plugin then treats it as a valid signature and allows the attacker to log in. It is a basic coding mistake, but particularly serious because the plugin handles authentication for WordPress admin accounts. The technical root cause is interesting. What happened around the bugs afterward is more interesting. The miniOrange SAML plugin ships under one WordPress slug, miniorange-saml-20-single-sign-on, but that one listing actually contains seven completely separate product editions, each with its own independent version numbering. Free runs from 3.x to 5.x. Premium runs 11.x to 13.x. Standard runs 15.x to 17.x. VIP editions start at 32.x and 35.x. No two editions share a version range. When the public advisories were written, they covered only the Free edition, which is the one anyone can download from WordPress.org. The fix for the Free edition landed at 5.4.5. “While that record is correct, when you apply it to the slug, every paid install carries a higher version number than 5.4.5, so every paid install reads as already patched.” reads Patchstack analysis. “Therefore, any WordPress site that was running a vulnerable version like 16.1.9 reported it as patched, along with every other (13.x, 20.x, 26.x, 32.x, and 35.x) vulnerable version.” Every database, scanner, and dashboard in the WordPress security ecosystem was telling paid-edition administrators their sites were safe when the exploitable code was still running on their servers. The update prompt problem makes it worse. Sites running a vulnerable Standard edition 16.x see no available updates in their WordPress admin panel because the fix is on the 17.x line, and WordPress’s built-in update mechanism doesn’t offer cross-line jumps automatically. The path from vulnerable to patched requires a manual plugin upload, which site owners can’t do if they don’t know they’re affected, and every system they rely on was telling them they weren’t. “There was no advisory to read and no vulnerability database entry flagged the paid edition for these vulnerabilities. The plugin reported itself as fully up to date. In other words, every signal that normally warns of a problem suggested that everything was fine.” continues the report. “So, how did DigitalOcean catch the exploit? It had nothing to do with plugins or versions. An anomalous WordPress administrator session attempt appeared from outside their trusted network and was blocked. The attacker had already used the bypass to obtain a WordPress admin session cookie, but was stalled because the admin panel operations themselves sat restricted behind the trusted network. “ DigitalOcean, the team that found all of this, caught the exploit not through any of those systems but through a network anomaly: an authenticated WordPress administrator session arriving from outside their trusted network perimeter. The attacker had already used one of the auth bypasses to generate a valid admin session cookie. The cookie worked. The session was blocked because the admin panel itself was restricted to trusted network ranges. Defense in depth, doing exactly what it exists to do, on a system where every other detection layer had already failed. DigitalOcean then traced both bugs to specific lines of code in the plugin and its bundled XML security library, confirmed the affected version ranges across all seven paid editions (which miniOrange had not published anywhere), wrote two narrowly scoped hotfixes to buy time, and handed the full analysis to Patchstack for publication. Patchstack worked with miniOrange to get the complete edition and version matrix, then updated its database with all seven affected ranges, the first time any public database held that information. Attackers are actively scanning miniOrange SSO endpoints from six IP addresses in Belgium, Nigeria, the U.S. and Germany. The activity appears opportunistic, with attackers checking websites that use the plugin without first identifying the specific version or edition. That makes the silent patch especially concerning. Attackers can probe systems without knowing what version they run, while website owners may not realize whether their plugin has received the fix. “Vulnerability databases are only as good as the version data vendors publish publicly. When a vendor runs seven independently numbered editions under one slug and patches six of them without a public advisory, the entire ecosystem downstream of them goes blind at once: databases, scanners, dashboards, and the site admins relying on all three.” concludes the report. For anyone running this plugin, the full version table per edition is in the Patchstack article. The short version: find your edition, compare your version against the patched column, and expect to do the upgrade as a manual upload rather than through the WordPress dashboard. If you can’t update immediately, two narrowly scoped hotfixes covering both CVEs are published there alongside the IPs to check in your logs for prior exploitation attempts. Check the passkey and admin account list while you’re in there. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, miniOrange SAML WordPress Plugin)
A large distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack has disrupted Norway’s shared government digital infrastructure since Monday, affecting services used by the public sector. The attack started at 03.38 CEST on Monday and has targeted the infrastructure supporting services operated by the Norwegian Digitalization Agency, Digitaliseringsdirektoratet (Digdir), and its operations provider, Vivicta. Digdir operates Norway’s shared digital government infrastructure, including public-service logins, electronic IDs and signatures, secure digital mail, government forms, public-record access, and data exchange between agencies. In an announcement published earlier today, the organization states that several services were completely unavailable for short periods. The agency says many affected systems have now been stabilized, although some services, like ID-porten and eSignering, remain partially inaccessible.
Attackers are increasingly targeting the processes used to establish or recover identity rather than attacking the login itself. Specops explains how stronger identity verification can help organizations prevent fake workers and social engineering attacks from gaining legitimate access.
Threat actors have already compromised over 270 Zimbra instances in remote code execution attacks targeting a high-severity Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) vulnerability. The ZCS email and collaboration suite is used by hundreds of millions of people and organizations, including thousands of businesses and hundreds of government agencies worldwide. Synacor patched the security flaw (tracked as CVE-2026-73570), which allows unauthenticated attackers to gain code execution remotely by exploiting a command injection weakness in the SNMP monitoring component when SNMP notifications are enabled, with the release of ZCS version 10.1.20 on July 20. CERT Polska, the Polish Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), first flagged the vulnerability as targeted in the wild last Monday, when it also warned security teams to check their logs for suspicious activity, including the Zimbra service restarting unexpectedly, and for files created in the /opt/zimbra/jetty/webapps/, /opt/zimbra/jetty_base/webapps/, and /tmp/ folders by user zimbra over the last 30 days.
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