There is rising concern that info was leaked a critical vulnerability in the widely used programming language PHP before the public announcement and patch were released, based on Amazon and Cloudflare discovering attempts to exploit the bug.
Amazon Threat Intelligence said it detected apparent attempts to exploit the flaw against its honeypot servers on Oct. 17, four days before details of the vulnerability and a security patch were released on Oct. 21.
The activity suggests attackers had prior knowledge of the flaw, though how they obtained it remains unclear.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Oct. 22 that the company observed “thousands of attempts to exploit it” across its network beginning 10 hours before the vulnerability was publicly disclosed.
The pace of attacks accelerated rapidly after details of the flaw were released.
“That jumped to tens of thousands in the 45 minutes post announcement, hundreds of thousands within 2 hours, and millions now,” Prince wrote.
Amazon also said it detected additional attempts to exploit the vulnerability before the public disclosure on Oct. 21.
Exploit code began circulating within hours of the release, and the company quickly detected attacks using it.
It remains unclear whether attacks observed against the honeypot servers successfully compromised real-world systems.
Amazon urged organizations to investigate potential signs of intrusion dating back at least to Oct. 17, warning that the vulnerability is now being widely exploited.
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