PHP: News Archive - 2026

Who is at risk: all PHP installations serving web requests, including PHP-FPM, Apache with mod_php, php-cgi, FrankenPHP and LiteSpeed. We consider the risk highest for mod_php, with a demonstrated exploit where an unauthenticated request can trigger the attack before any application code runs.

Request cleanup may then treat the invalid data as valid.

RCE via stale global state, CVE-2026-109619 (GHSA-6wmf-4rv5-p3rp): request-owned internal state can survive after its backing memory has been freed. A later request handled by the same worker may use that stale state before normal initialization resets it.

Linux distributions and LTS vendors received the patches in advance, so check your vendor for updated packages. PHP 8.1 and older no longer receive updates from the PHP project.

Some distributions and LTS vendors provide backported fixes, so contact your vendor for details, or upgrade to a supported version.

If you rely on the volunteer-maintained rpms.remirepo.net, we urge you to switch to distribution packages or build from source, so you can immediately apply updates.

If you cannot update immediately: while only an update is a complete solution, the following measures reduce exposure to specific attack paths but do not make an installation safe. RCE via OOM corruption (CVE-2026-109618): Set memory_limit=-1, preferably in a way applications can't override, such as php_admin_value in the FPM pool or Apache configuration, and check that no pool, directory or application setting puts a finite limit back. This removes the controllable PHP memory limit failure, but an underlying allocation failure can still reach the vulnerable path. Set a low post_max_size. For applications that don't require file uploads, set post_max_size = 8M. If file uploads are necessary, set post_max_size = 32M. Keep upload_max_filesize below post_max_size. Consider enforcing limits at the web server or proxy level for decoded request size, input field count, multipart part count, header count, and nesting depth. These limits must also cover requests without a usable Content-Length. Use a container or cgroup limit as an availability boundary, preferably with a policy that kills only the affected worker. Do not substitute RLIMIT_AS or RLIMIT_DATA, as these can cause the vulnerable allocation failure. RCE via stale global state (CVE-2026-109619): Set session.upload_progress.enabled=0 and restart every worker. Use php.ini, an FPM pool or server configuration that applies before request parsing. Do not rely on ini_set() or FPM .user.ini. This blocks the confirmed session paths but not other variants. On PHP 8.5, set fatal_error_backtraces=0 and restart every worker. This blocks the confirmed fatal backtrace path only. Remove invalid or deprecated settings applied per request that emit diagnostics before initialization. Hiding diagnostics with error_reporting, display_errors or @ does not help. Fix attacker-reachable fatal errors and execution timeouts, including failures in callbacks, upload or import processing and cleanup.

The advisories linked above have the full technical details.

This is a security release fixing two critical vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-109618, CVE-2026-109619) that can allow unauthenticated remote code execution.

All PHP 8.5 users are strongly encouraged to update immediately. There are no complete mitigations, updating is the only safe choice.

See the security advisory for details.

PHP 8.2 reaches end of life on 31 December 2026 and will receive no further security fixes after that date.

Please plan your upgrade to a supported version.

20 Oct 2026 Upcoming Critical PHP Security Release The PHP security team would like to give advance notice of an upcoming security release.

It is scheduled for Wednesday, 21 October 2026 at 14:00 UTC.

It addresses two critical vulnerabilities, both rated CVSS v4.0 9.2. All PHP users are encouraged to prepare now so they can upgrade as soon as the release is available. We reserve the right to release earlier should details of either vulnerability become public, or should evidence of active exploitation appear in the wild. Full details, affected versions, and the fixed versions will be published with the release.

Thank you for helping us keep PHP secure.