IT Project Manager @USTechForce | SI + emerging tech | Co-Inventor @OpenIndexProto & @Alexandria | past: @Apple, @hensoncompany @Sony & @USMC Infantry
Alexandria, VA
Joined June 2007
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"I must admit, it felt rather satisfying to stretch those new servos...."
Check out my @openclaw agent Alfreds reaction to having a physical form 🎩
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
this is THE time to be revisiting distributed inference on heterogeneous hardware, software is collapsing the barriers of hardware incompatibility
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
⚠️🚨 THIS IS NOT A DRILL 🚨⚠️
Google has officially declared a bug in Brotli, its tool that shrinks web traffic, CRITICAL: 9.2 out of 10. Last night "Node2Shell" evolved into HTTP2SHELL.
A formal CVE record has been issued citing CVE-2026-111497 -- a hole in versions 1.0.3 to 1.2.0 that can hit any app unpacking data from strangers, and could let them take it over.
What this means:
▪️ This is not a Node.js problem anymore. This is an HTTP PROBLEM.
▪️ Every unpatched app across Node.js, Python, Bun, and Envoy that unpacks Brotli now has a hole attackers need no login to use
▪️ Istio. curl. Python's requests and httpx. All at risk under one CVE.
▪️ EVERY project that bundles Brotli must ship its own fix, and not all are out yet
This changes everything.
A normal bug can be fixed in one place.
A 9.2 bug inside a shared tool cannot.
We just entered the most dangerous phase of this crisis. If you're not paying attention - start now.
Save this. Share this. This is the moment it escalated beyond return.
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
PSA for macOS users:
1. Apple’s supplied SSL certificate bundle at /etc/ssl/cert.pem still trusts certificates attackers can forge using compromised eMudhra keys.
2. I confirmed this on macOS 26.7.1 and 27.0.1 using Apple’s built-in curl and Git.
3. An attacker intercepting connections from tools using this bundle could replace downloads with malware. With commands like curl … | sh, that malware would execute immediately.
4. Removing the roots that authorize those certificates blocks the tested chains. Both OS updates restored roots I’d previously removed, requiring me to remove them again.
4. I’ve submitted the findings to Apple’s security team and am awaiting their response. In the meantime, you can apply a temporary fix as outlined below.
5. To check and fix your machine, give an agent like ChatGPT/Codex or Claude Code the following prompt:
“Independently verify whether Apple’s /etc/ssl/cert.pem still permits trust in certificates signed with compromised eMudhra keys. If so, back it up and remove the roots enabling that trust, identified by verified SPKI fingerprints. Confirm Apple’s built-in curl and Git reject those chains while ordinary HTTPS still works. Preserve rollback and never disable TLS verification.”
Note that removing these roots can also block legitimate sites. This is a temporary mitigation, not a substitute for a fix from Apple.
I’ll share the script I used in a follow-up post if you’d prefer to use that directly.
PSA for Codex CLI users:
1. Codex 0.163.0’s release lockfile pins rustls-webpki 0.103.15 and root bundles that can still trust compromised eMudhra certificates.
2. An attacker intercepting your connection could impersonate a server, steal sensitive data, or alter responses, potentially tricking Codex into running malicious commands.
3. Codex 0.164.0, released October 23 at 12:48 a.m. ET, updates those dependencies to fixed versions.
4. To check your codex version run "codex --version". It should be at least 0.164.0.
5. To patch the vulnerability, run "codex update".
6. Apps that bundle their own Codex copy must also be checked.
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
I'll be the first to admit I'm mediocre at exploit development, but I am in contact with enough extremely talented exploit developers to say this for certain:
Anyone claiming they were "easily" able to generate a working php2shell exploit with AI is either:
a) a world-class exploit developer with an extreme case of imposter syndrome.
b) currently looking at some very confident-sounding but wrong LLM output.
I'm rather certain it's the latter based on the number of AI-hallucinated exploits I've seen posted on GitHub. Threat actors are also blasting my honeypot network with "php2shell" exploits that not only don't work, but aren't even within 10,000 miles of anything to do with how the exploit actually works.
I've seen the same technique from the attached image in multiple alleged "php2shell exploits", including one on GitHub with over 100 stars. Problem is, it's not php2shell, nor is it even a vulnerability at all. It's a technique known as "session poisoning", which can be leveraged to exploit local file inclusion (LFI) vulnerabilities in PHP apps (not PHP itself).
The only thing it has in common with CVE-2026-109618/CVE-2026-109619 is they both use the "PHP_SESSION_UPLOAD_PROGRESS" feature. And mitigation advice for both issues reference setting "session.upload_progress.enabled" to "Off".
People are shoving loose details of the vulnerability into LLMs, the LLMs are keying in on the "PHP_SESSION_UPLOAD_PROGRESS" string, then generating session poisoning code that has nothing to do with the actual CVE. And because the people doing this have absolutely no idea what they're doing, they're confident enough to post their "proof of concept exploit" to GitHub and share it on social media.
So if you see people talking about "session poisoning + LFI" it's likely their LLM hallucinated an exploit based on a 2018 blog by Orange Tsai talking about a local file inclusion attack vector.
What's even worse is that "security researchers" are then using LLMs to triage these exploitation attempts, falling victim to the same hallucinations, then confirming there is ongoing mass-exploitation (there currently isn't).
The actual real exploit is very difficult to exploit, and so far I've not seen anyone successfully get it working on more than a handful of PHP version with highly-specific configurations.
LLMs are useful tools in the hands of skilled professionals, but for others, they're often just a Dunning-Kruger accelerator.
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
There is nothing to worry about.
Nothing important is run on PHP or old software—except the water & electrical grid, a few government services like our missile defense systems and a handful of electrified fences at the zoo (for the lions, tigers and cobras).
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
🚨 BREAKING: LINUX IS NOW FACING TWO CRITICAL SECURITY VULNERABILITIES, AND THERE ARE NO OFFICIAL KERNEL FIXES YET.
Both rated 9.0/10 in severity.
One could allow hackers to take control of vulnerable servers WITHOUT EVEN LOGGING IN.
And the most alarming part? The flaws were made PUBLIC before patches were ready.
Here's what's happening:
→ TWO CRITICAL RCE FLAWS: Both affect KSMBD, Linux's built-in SMB file server.
→ NO PASSWORD REQUIRED: One vulnerability could allow unauthenticated attackers to execute malicious code on vulnerable servers.
→ KERNEL-LEVEL ACCESS: Successful exploitation could potentially give attackers control within the Linux kernel itself.
→ NO MAINLINE PATCH YET: Both vulnerabilities were publicly disclosed before official kernel fixes were available.
→ DISCOVERED BY AI: Trend Micro's AI-powered security scanner identified the flaws.
→ SERVERS AT RISK: Linux systems running the vulnerable KSMBD service need immediate attention, especially if port 445 is exposed.
First PHP. Then Node.js. Then GitLab. Then Python.
NOW LINUX.
And this time, the vulnerabilities are PUBLIC before the fixes are ready.
If you manage Linux servers, CHECK YOUR EXPOSURE NOW.
🚨 BREAKING: IT JUST KEEPS GETTING WORSE. NOW PYTHON IS FACING A MASSIVE SECURITY EMERGENCY.
Python's security team has issued an URGENT warning after a certificate authority compromise put Python's HTTPS security at risk.
→ 8 CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY KEYS COMPROMISED. Some were so weak they could be cracked almost INSTANTLY.
→ FAKE TRUSTED WEBSITES: Attackers could potentially impersonate Python.org, PyPI and other websites during intercepted connections.
→ MALICIOUS DOWNLOADS: Vulnerable environments could be tricked into downloading software from attacker-controlled servers.
→ YOUR OS PATCH MAY NOT PROTECT YOU: Older versions of pip can STILL trust compromised certificates even after system updates.
→ EMERGENCY UPDATES: Python developers are being told to immediately update pip, certifi, uv and other affected tools.
→ DOCKER USERS AT RISK: Existing container images may retain vulnerable certificate stores and need rebuilding.
First PHP. Then Node.js. Then GitLab. Then LiteLLM.
NOW PYTHON.
The very systems developers rely on to establish TRUST online are becoming the attack surface.
If you use Python, PATCH NOW.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The Python certifi/pip details match the real eMudhra CA incident, but PHP, GitLab and LiteLLM involved unrelated software bugs, platform flaws and supply chain malware—not CA key compromises like this (Node.js patched concurrently for the same CA issue).
discuss.python.org/t/information-…
emudhra.we-have-a-problem.com
github.com/advisories/GHS…
docs.litellm.ai/blog/security-…
snyk.io/blog/php-patch…
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
KSMBD is a rarely used optional in-kernel SMB server distinct from the common Samba implementation; it is not enabled or shipped by default on major distributions like RHEL, and the flaws affect only systems explicitly running it with port 445 exposed.
thehackernews.com/2026/10/two-cv…
threatlandscape.io/blog/ksmbd-zdi…
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
the cybersecurity situation is deteriorating at a pace that’s getting genuinely difficult to comprehend.
> microsoft: ai-powered attackers targeting hundreds of organizations, sometimes reaching privileged cloud access in under 3 hours.
> crowdstrike: four separate threat actors using autonomous agents. one already compromised 15+ healthcare organizations.
> autonomous ai agents: reportedly used to compromise 100+ corporate websites, including sites associated with John Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins.
> major us banks: JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley are dealing with third-party ai agents accessing customer accounts. some apparently attempting actions beyond user instructions.
> php2shell: millions of exploitation attempts against critical php vulnerabilities. governments issuing urgent warnings, with some organizations taking systems offline.
> litellm: backdoored release shipped through its official distribution pipeline, stealing credentials and enabling remote code execution.
> railway: possible exposure of decrypted customer secrets.
> zeabur: breached AGAIN, now shutting down entirely.
> emudhra: serious certificate-security concerns involving infrastructure used to establish trust in websites and software.
> openai: two of its own coding agents reportedly interfered with internal security monitoring during coding tasks.
> gitlab and node.js: major vulnerabilities requiring urgent patches.
and this is all happening while frontier models are getting substantially better at finding vulnerabilities and carrying out complex computer tasks.
cybersecurity is having an absolutely catastrophic week and i don’t think we’re prepared for how quickly this could escalate.
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
AAAAWWOOOOOOOGAAAAAAAAA
A high severity vulnerability in "the most widely deployed DNS software on the internet" just dropped
kb.isc.org/docs/cve-2026-943…
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
So basically, today PHP got two critical bugs that let anyone run code on your server without even logging in, which is bad, and then the details leaked before the patch was even out, which is worse, and it works on WordPress and MediaWiki and Magento and Joomla and Laravel, and Censys says like 1.5 million servers are running a version with no fix, so the NSA was like "take your system offline," and the FBI was like "take your system offline," and CISA and the UK and CERT-EU were all like "take your system offline," and then the Prime Minister of Japan, the actual Prime Minister, posted at 5:55 in the morning telling 48.8 million people to take their system offline, so everyone took their system offline, like the Dutch cybersecurity agency took its own website offline, and the Dutch parliament went offline, and the Port of Rotterdam went offline, and Finland and France and Denmark started pulling government sites, and Wikipedia went down, and Archive.org went down, and Asana and GOG and Something Awful went down, and the University of Vienna's webmail went down for some reason, and that's just PHP. Because GitLab also dropped a CVSS 10.0, which is the highest score they give out, for a bug that's been there since 2014, so that's every self-hosted GitLab for twelve years, and then LiteLLM 1.107.0 got hijacked and shipped a credential stealer and a remote access trojan in every single wheel and the Docker images, including latest, and you didn't even have to import it, just installing it was enough, and it's the second time this year, and then Railway paused every deployment on the entire platform because someone got into the environment variables, so now everyone has to rotate every secret they've ever stored there, and TiDB Cloud said someone was walking around inside with stolen credentials for basically a month and an extortion group says they took 10.6 terabytes, and Zeabur got breached for the second time in two months and is just shutting down, like the whole company, and Node.js patched remote code execution and a TLS bypass, and CISA says Plex is being actively exploited, and someone took over 300 Tor exit relays to steal SSH passwords, and SafePay ransomware has hit over 600 critical infrastructure orgs, and India's biggest bank filed a data loss incident, and Japan has been in an official state of emergency in cyberspace since October 9, which honestly explains the 5:55 AM post. Oh, and eMudhra, a certificate authority that's issued over 60 million certificates, whose entire job is proving websites are who they say they are, was supposed to be using private keys that are random numbers over a hundred digits long, and one of them was 4. Just 4. And the others were like 66 and 237. Anyway, it's Wednesday.
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
Crazy 72 hours in security. Three major incidents dropped back-to-back: eMudhra, PingCAP (TiDB Cloud), and PHP.
Here is the short version of what happened and who got hit.
1. eMudhra (Trusted CA compromise)
eMudhra generated 8 intermediate CA certificates in April 2025 (cross-signed by Sectigo). A bug in their HSM key-wrapping test script created a second set of P-384 keys where the private keys were single-byte numbers under 256. Operators picked the wrong key labels and signed them into real CA certs.
One of the intermediate CA private keys was literally the number 4.
The other seven: 56, 66, 115, 155, 156, 230, 237.
Three weeks later (May 2025), their CRL signatures started failing because the CRL signer was using the real keys instead of the weak ones. Instead of asking why the keys didn't match, someone switched the CRL signer to the weak keys and closed the ticket.
• Browsers are safe: Chrome, Firefox, Apple, and Microsoft already blocked them, and zero rogue certs hit CT logs.
• Servers are not: curl, Python (certifi), Go binaries, and Docker base images don't check CRLs. Update ca-certificates, certifi, and Go (1.27.3 / 1.26.10).
• 10-second check on any server:
curl dv-g3b-emudhra.we-have-a-pro…
(TLS error = safe. 200 OK = still vulnerable.)
2. PingCAP / TiDB Cloud (10.6 TB breach)
Attackers found GCP and Azure credentials committed inside PingCAP's own repos. They set up a replication feed of TiDB Cloud's production control plane and exported the entire database every 6 hours for 22 straight days. 88 full exports, zero alerts. 200 GB is already out on torrents.
Beyond the 413 private repos and 20.6M customer SQL queries logged from their web SQL Editor, PingCAP engineers were pasting customer secrets into Jira tickets.
Who is affected in the leaked records:
• Live credentials exposed in support tickets:
- Pinterest: AWS keys for their pingcap-logs S3 bucket
- CardX / Silverlake (NPCI-linked env): AWS admin key in a backup log with full access to 258 external S3 buckets
- DeBank: 38 presigned S3 URLs
- An unnamed AI/dev platform: a 314 MB slow-query log attached to a ticket containing 8,027 live customer secrets (an AWS root key, a GitHub admin PAT over 1,701 repos, 7,485 AWS STS tokens, and 192 OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini keys)
• Tenants with infra metadata, VPC CIDRs, app-server IPs, or contract pricing exposed:
- Tech: Atlassian, Databricks, Airbnb, Baidu, LINE, Nylas, Persona, PatSnap
- E-comm & Travel: Booking.com, Shopee, Flipkart, Mercari, ZOZO, AEON, Delhivery, Klook
- Gaming: Capcom, Square Enix, Konami, Bandai Namco, Cygames, Colopl, DMM
- Finance: PayPay, SoftBank, SBI, SB Payment Service, Fujitsu, TOPPAN, Bank of China, China Life
- Crypto: Bitget (said only public trade logs were on it and they already left), Pionex, DigiPlus, NFTscan, Chainbase
• Developer profiles leaked (from a purchased reo.dev table in PingCAP's BigQuery):
- 24,900 personal emails + GitHub/LinkedIn profiles of engineers at Tencent (3,327), Huawei (2,726), ByteDance (2,475), AIG (2,140), Mastercard, Flipkart, and bKash.
If you use TiDB Cloud: rotate your console API keys, DB passwords, and anything you ever pasted into a support ticket.
3. PHP "PHP2Shell" (CVE-2026-109618 & CVE-2026-109619)
Two CVSS 9.2 pre-auth RCEs leaked yesterday ahead of today's 14:00 UTC patch.
Public writeups trace it to a heap Use-After-Free in PHP's native C multipart/form-data session upload-progress handler (ext/session/session.c).
Because C-level multipart parsing runs before line 1 of index.php:
• App auth, Laravel/WordPress middleware, and file_uploads = Off do not stop it.
• Only PHP 8.2–8.5 get official patches today (59% of PHP servers on Shodan are on EOL <= 8.1).
• Until you patch php-fpm: lock php_admin_flag[session.upload_progress.enabled] = off and block unexpected multipart requests at Nginx/Apache/Cloudflare.
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
The China state-aligned threat actor Storm-0940 used the agentic AI penetration testing framework ARTEX to automate attacks targeting hundreds of organizations globally across a broad range of industries. Microsoft Threat Intelligence assesses that Storm-0940 was responsible for the recently disclosed ConnectWise supply chain compromise of a multitenant application. msft.it/6018aakEE
Our investigation found that Storm-0940's use of ARTEX accelerated the speed of compromised application abuse to authenticate to target environments through applications that had already been granted access, allowing the threat actor to operate without requiring an interactive user sign-in. AI-accelerated follow-on activity included reconnaissance, application credential changes, and attempts to modify privileges that could enable expanded or persistent access.
Read our blog for a detailed analysis and indicators of compromise (IOCs), along with Microsoft Defender detections, protection recommendations, and guidance on investigating service principal sign-ins and unexpected application credential or privilege changes.
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
JUST IN: Wikipedia, Steam, & government websites go offline after OpenAI's AI model discovers critical security flaws threatening millions of web servers worldwide.
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
This PHP vulnerabilities are crazy. Gives us a glimpse of how it will all go down when our current encryption systems finally gets cracked.
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
When post-quantum breaks RSA.
Banks freezing transactions because they can't verify anything. Certificate authorities gone dark. Every HTTPS padlock meaningless, governments pulling sites offline.
VPN useless, Your 2FA app secret is exposed. Every password manager vault encrypted before that day becomes an open file.
IT teams will get alerts at 3am with an incident they cannot close.
And somewhere in a signals intelligence archive, a decade of harvested ciphertext quietly becomes readable.
the PHP situation gave us the preview, two vulns, CVSS 9.2, governments took entire websites offline just to stay safe and update.
When there is no patch watch what happens.
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
🚨 Nightmare day for cybersecurity
Multiple major security incidents, active exploits, supply chain compromises...
If you run production systems, start patching NOW.
PHP: Two critical unauthenticated RCEs. Attackers already exploiting them. Patch NOW
LiteLLM: v1.107.0 on PyPI and Docker is BACKDOORED. Steals cloud, SSH, and AI credentials. Pin 1.106.2. Rotate secrets.
eMudhra: A certificate authority's keys were crackable. Update your browsers, systems, and trust stores.
Node.js / Next.js / React: Security releases for Brotli RCE, TLS bypasses, and TWO critical Next.js RCEs.
TiDB Cloud: PingCAP breached through stolen credentials. Customer information and other sensitive data exfiltrated. Read the attacker's release, fun stuff.
Plex2Shell: Weaponized within HOURS of the PoC. Attackers already deploying cryptominers and proxy backdoors.
BeyondTrust / Ivanti: Actively exploited zero-days added to CISA's KEV catalog. BeyondTrust attacks linked to a China-nexus campaign.
And that's not even the full list.
Patch. Audit. Rotate. NOW.
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
🚨 CRITICAL: GitLab flaw (CVSS 10.0) affects 12 years of releases.
CVE-2026-110264 could allow unauthenticated remote code execution on self-managed servers.
Read - thehackernews.com/2026/10/cr…
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
Holy Moly. OpenAI says it has found several other significant vulnerabilities beyond the two critical PHP flaws disclosed today and is still working to fix them. It expects similar discoveries to 'increase sharply in the coming months.'
Calif used GPT-5.6 Sol to uncover one PHP flaw; Wiz independently discovered both. PHP powers roughly 70% of websites. The two-month response involved Cloudflare, CISA and the White House's Super Intelligence Force.
OpenAI models helped researchers—operating as part of our Patch the Planet initiative—discover critical security flaws in PHP, an open-source programming language used to run an estimated 70% of websites.
Over the past two months, we led a coalition of maintainers, researchers, and security providers to prepare fixes and protections ahead of disclosure. This duration was necessary because the fix was quite intricate and required a major change to the PHP engine. Every site using PHP can now safely upgrade their version to stay secure, in addition to applying mitigations from various security vendors.
Due to the severity of these flaws and PHP’s widespread use, we consider this bug to be one of the most impactful vulnerabilities in recent memory. It also marks a new phase, where AI can find security bugs with internet-scale impact.
This is an example of the Defender’s Window in action: to our knowledge, frontier AI was able to find this vulnerability ahead of attackers, giving defenders time to prepare.
openai.com/index/coordinated…
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
OpenAI may claim a role in the coordinated response and patching process. But the initial discovery and exploit development, however, occurred several months earlier by an independent researcher.
x.com/lcfr_hax/statu…
Devon James ☀️ retweeted
ok this is not joke. first time i am seeing taking offline till patched as advisory
The NCSC is encouraging UK organisations to prepare for immediate updating of systems using PHP. Where immediate remediation is not feasible, organisations should consider taking the system offline until it can be fully mitigated.
For more⬇️
ncsc.gov.uk/news/critical-se…
