Artifactory Under Attack: In-the-Wild Exploitation of CVE-2026-42016, CVE-2026-42018 & CVE-2026-82329
Wiz Research confirms in-the-wild exploitation of three JFrog Artifactory vulnerabilities, chained to gain administrative control, deploy Groovy plugins, and install Rust backdoors.
Wiz Research identified active exploitation of CVE-2026-42016, CVE-2026-42018, and CVE-2026-82329 in JFrog Artifactory between August 15 and September 8, 2026. Attackers chain the anonymous-token exposure (CVE-2026-42018) with the token scope-validation flaw (CVE-2026-42016) to obtain admin-scoped tokens, while CVE-2026-82329 allows unauthenticated administrative access in default configurations. Observed post-exploitation includes persistent administrator accounts created in under five minutes, malicious Groovy plugin deployment, ad-hoc command execution, Rust-based C2 backdoors dropped to writable paths, and webshell uploads. Wiz measured that 59-62% of organizations running Artifactory remained vulnerable to the chained CVEs weeks after disclosure, and the vulnerabilities were already included in CISA KEV.
CISA Adds Two Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog
CISA added two actively exploited MikroTik RouterOS vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-67277 and CVE-2026-86060, to its KEV catalog, mandating federal remediation.
CISA added CVE-2026-67277 (missing authentication for a critical function) and CVE-2026-86060 (improper neutralization of argument delimiters in a command), both in MikroTik RouterOS, to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog based on evidence of active exploitation. Under BOD 26-04, Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies must prioritize rapid remediation of these flaws on publicly exposed assets that grant total control post-exploitation. Agencies are also required to check whether systems were compromised before patches were applied.
Researcher Publishes CrowdStrike Privilege Escalation Zero Day
Researcher NightmareEclipse published FalconFlank, a zero-day local privilege escalation in CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor abusing its Office malicious macro remediation feature.
A researcher known as Nightmare Eclipse published details of FalconFlank, a zero-day privilege escalation that abuses the Microsoft Office malicious macro removal feature in CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor, verified working on fully updated Windows 11 25H2 and Windows Server 2025 with Falcon Phase 3 Optimal Protection. CrowdStrike urged customers to disable the Office File Suspicious Macro Removal policy while it investigates, noting customers remain protected via Cloud Anti-malware for Microsoft Office Files; no CVE has been assigned. The same researcher previously released the Exploitarium dump of over 30 PoC exploits, and researcher Kevin Beaumont confirmed FalconFlank works.
Researcher Releases FalconFlank PoC Showing Privilege Escalation in CrowdStrike Falcon
Researcher Chaotic Eclipse released FalconFlank, a zero-day privilege escalation PoC abusing CrowdStrike Falcon's Office macro remediation; CrowdStrike is investigating and issued a tech alert.
Researcher Chaotic Eclipse published FalconFlank, a proof-of-concept zero-day local privilege escalation in CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor that abuses the Microsoft Office malicious macros remediation feature, tested on fully updated Windows 11 25H2 and Windows Server 2025. CrowdStrike said it is investigating, advised disabling the Microsoft Office File Suspicious Macro Removal policy, and pointed customers to a FalconFlank tech alert, noting cloud anti-malware protection remains active. The article also covers related PoCs from the same researcher: HardBreacher against Kaspersky (fixed via update), ShieldBreak (CVE-2026-69414) against Microsoft Defender, an unpatched patch bypass of CVE-2026-50656, GreenSection against NVIDIA, and PrettyPrague against Avast, which Gen Digital patched in versions 26.7.11086 and 26.8.11125.