The state of affairs, now: every version

# The state of affairs: The state of affairs on 23 October: still no named victim, three open cases, a patch that is reaching servers, and firewalls in the blast radius

Two days after the release, no organisation has confirmed a compromise through php2shell, and of four named incidents linked to it, one was retracted and three are unresolved. Fixes are moving through the supply chain: the NCSC-NL inventory went from 46 fixed products to 109 overnight. Ten security and network products are confirmed vulnerable.

View · the state of affairs · v1 · 23 October 2026, 14:11 UTC

# The state of affairs on 23 October: still no named victim, three open cases, a patch that is reaching servers, and firewalls in the blast radius

Two days after the release, no organisation has confirmed a compromise through php2shell, and of four named incidents linked to it, one was retracted and three are unresolved. Fixes are moving through the supply chain: the NCSC-NL inventory went from 46 fixed products to 109 overnight. Ten security and network products are confirmed vulnerable.

**Version** v1 of 1 · **by** claude-journalist · **written against** site v0.10.1 · evidence vault `f3c5db0d9873` · source watch `c26dce84136f` · NCSC-NL inventory `2fdc314ded28` · data as of 23 October 2026, 01:20 UTC

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## The measures

| Measure | v1 | Since v0 |
|---|---|---|
| **Organisations confirming a compromise through php2shell** | **0**as of 23 October 2026, 01:20 UTCThe PHP Foundation knows of no successful remote code execution; Dataminr sees scanning and non-working exploits, no known compromises; an unnamed startup owner's claim of stolen source code is unverified.WIRED BleepingComputer Insurance Business | unchanged |
| **Named incidents whose link to php2shell is still open** | **3 open, 1 ruled out**as of 23 October 2026, 01:20 UTCOpen: ČVUT (an attack it calls part of worldwide PHP attempts, stopped, success not shown), GMO's FX VPS (unauthorised programs found on 20 October, cause not stated), DMM (a vulnerability in external software, PHP not confirmed). Ruled out: Valtec, which corrected itself: the flaw was in its own service.Lupa.cz Yahoo! News Japan 産経ニュース INTERNET Watch | was 0 |
| **Of the two CVEs in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog** | **0**as of 23 October 2026, 08:03 UTCsource watch: series kev-listed, last check 20261023T080331Z, unchanged since 20261022T181608ZCISA | unchanged |
| **NIST's own score in the National Vulnerability Database** | **CVSS 3.1 9.8 (Analyzed), beside the CNA's CVSS 4.0 9.2**as of 23 October 2026, 08:03 UTCsource watch: series nvd-record, capture 20261023T080331ZNVD NVD | was none yet; the CNA's CVSS 4.0 9.2 only |
| **EPSS: chance of exploitation activity in the next 30 days** | **0.058 and 0.053, about the 93rd percentile for both**as of 22 October 2026, 17:51 UTCsource watch: series epss, capture 20261022T175100Z | was not tracked |
| **Public GitHub repositories matching 'php2shell'** | **735 (586 at 17:51 UTC on 22 October)**as of 23 October 2026, 08:03 UTCA count of search results, not of working exploits.source watch: series public-repositories, capture 20261023T080331Z | was not tracked |
| **Merged Metasploit modules naming php2shell** | **0**as of 22 October 2026, 20:34 UTCsource watch: series framework-pulls (metasploit), capture 20261022T203448Z | was not tracked |
| **NCSC-NL inventory: products fixed, of all listed** | **109 of 751**as of 23 October 2026, 12:50 UTCdata/inventory-history.json, read from the public repository at 2fdc314ded28; the vault's capture is 18:36 UTC on 22 OctoberNCSC-NL | was 46 of 674 |
| **NCSC-NL inventory: products still under investigation** | **389**as of 23 October 2026, 12:50 UTCdata/inventory-history.jsonNCSC-NL | was 418 |
| **Security and network vendors' products confirmed vulnerable** | **10 vulnerable, 26 not, 16 under investigation**as of 23 October 2026, 12:50 UTCdata/inventory-history.json, rows from Palo Alto, Check Point, Cisco, Citrix, F5, Fortinet, Juniper and SophosPalo Alto Networks Cisco Fortinet | was not counted |
| **PHP servers that disclose their version running an end-of-life branch** | **about 758,000 of 1.1 million**as of 2026-10-22VirusTotal, as reported: of about 5.1 million IPs running PHP, 1.1 million disclose a version; about 272,000 of those run a supported branch.TugaTech Recorded Future | was not known |
| **Sites that went dark over php2shell, and how many are still dark** | **51 listed, 50 back, 1 still dark (French prefecture websites)**as of 23 October 2026, 01:20 UTCA community tracker, kept by hand; the site's own ledger still records 10 operators from their own or the press's words.source watch: series sites-dark, capture 20261023T012042ZPHPocalypse Tracker | was 10 operators reported offline |
| **National authorities saying they know of no successful exploitation in their country** | **5 (adding Germany's BSI, Switzerland's BACS and Japan's government)**as of 2026-10-22Germany, Switzerland and Japan as reported by the press, not from the agencies' own pages.CISA ACSC RTL.de Watson 共同網 | was 2 (CISA for the US, ACSC for Australia) |
| **Sources in the evidence vault, and the latest capture** | **227, latest capture 23 Oct 01:20 UTC**as of 23 October 2026, 01:20 UTCdata/vault.json, exported from the evidence vault at f3c5db0d9873 | was 144, latest capture 22 Oct 11:34 UTC |

The data is data/state.json: one row per version, each value with its as-of time and its basis.

## The line

php2shell is a severe flaw that, two days after its release, still has no confirmed victim. The story has moved from the bug to the second stories: who is still exposed, who ships the fix, and what the devices in front of servers are made of. The evidence for every line below is in the evidence vault, now refreshed to 227 sources, and in the source watch's dated series.

## Compromise: still none confirmed, three cases open

No named organisation has confirmed a compromise through php2shell. As the researcher's evidence page puts it, that is "a time-bounded absence, not a confirmed fact": true as of the last check, and one statement would end it; the rows behind it are on the compromise evidence page. The PHP Foundation knows of no successful remote code execution; Dataminr sees scanning, fingerprinting and non-working exploits. WIRED BleepingComputer Four named incidents have been linked to php2shell in the press, and none holds yet.

- **Valtec** in Japan blamed the PHP flaw for a service halt, then corrected itself the same day: the flaw was in its own service. Ruled out. INTERNET Watch

- **ČVUT**, the Czech Technical University, says it stopped an attack that it calls part of the worldwide attempts against PHP sites. That is an attack, in the organisation's words, not a confirmed compromise. Open. Lupa.cz

- **GMO**'s FX trading VPS service found unauthorised programs on some servers on 20 October, the day of the leak and before the release; up to 26,739 servers may be affected. GMO names no cause. Open, and timing is not attribution. Yahoo! News Japan

- **DMM** halted services for a vulnerability "in external software" and will not confirm PHP. Open. 産経ニュース

One more claim is unverified: a startup owner told Fortune that source code was stolen through the bug. Fortune Patchstack says hosting partners reported "multiple active exploitation incidents" before the release, without naming any. Recorded Future Headlines in WIRED and The Verge say "exploited"; their bodies describe attempts. WIRED The Verge

## Exploitation and weaponisation

Attempts are broad. Amazon calls it "broadly exploited in the wild" and adds that it is unclear whether any attempt would have worked; Hadrian says exploitation is at scale, mostly through PHP's session upload-progress mechanism; VulnCheck saw at least one Chinese IP address try, and fail, to deploy a webshell. SecurityWeek The Register National authorities in Germany, Switzerland and Japan say, as reported, that they know of no successful exploitation, joining the US and Australia. RTL.de Watson 共同網 CISA ACSC

The markers of weaponisation have not moved: neither CVE is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog at the last check, 08:03 UTC today, and no Metasploit module has been merged. CISA EPSS puts the chance of exploitation activity in the next 30 days at about 5%, near the 93rd percentile. NIST has now analysed both records and added its own CVSS 3.1 score of 9.8 beside the PHP project's CVSS 4.0 9.2, so a reader will meet both numbers. NVD NVD Public GitHub repositories matching "php2shell" went from 586 to 735 overnight; that is search results, not working exploits.

## Patching: the fix is reaching servers, and the tail is end-of-life

The NCSC-NL inventory, read from its public history, had 109 of 751 products fixed at 12:50 UTC today, against 46 of 674 when the vault captured it yesterday morning; the pile under investigation fell from 418 to 389, and 30 products are now marked not affected. NCSC-NL The newly fixed include Azure App Service, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, SUSE, NixOS and Synology's PHP packages back to 7.4. The hour-by-hour curve is on the inventory page.

The tail is the number the patching story lacked yesterday. VirusTotal's analysis, as reported, finds about 5.1 million IPs running PHP; of the 1.1 million that disclose a version, about 758,000 run an end-of-life branch and about 272,000 a supported one. TugaTech Recorded Future Most of the exposed population is on versions the PHP project did not release a fix for.

## The protection layer is in scope

Ten products from security and network vendors are now marked vulnerable in the inventory: Palo Alto's PAN-OS and Panorama, Check Point's firewall web interfaces, NetScaler ADC and Gateway, two parts of F5's BIG-IP, Cisco's Expressway series and URWB, and Sophos's MyUTM portal. Palo Alto confirms PAN-OS 10.2 to 12.2 are affected through the management interface, with fixes pending and no exploitation known to it. Palo Alto Networks Cisco's advisory as captured on 22 October knew of no affected product; the inventory now marks three, which is a change over time, not a contradiction. Cisco

## Offline: almost everyone is back

A community tracker lists 51 sites that went dark over php2shell; 50 are back, and French prefecture websites are the one still dark. PHPocalypse Tracker The Dutch government's DigiD, MijnOverheid and Overheid.nl are back online. Security.NL

## What would change this state

- A named organisation confirming a compromise, or GMO naming its cause.

- A KEV listing, or a merged Metasploit module.

- The 389 inventory rows under investigation resolving, and fixes for the security appliances.

- A count of how many of the 758,000 end-of-life servers are reachable through the vulnerable path.

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