CSO @ TrustedSec | Music | Tattoos | H@x

Somewhere on your LAN
Joined May 2009
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.
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Tomorrow’s the day! Catch Senior Security Consultant @InfoSteph1 moderating “Zero Day, Zero Limits: Women Leading Cyber” at @ThreeRiversISec in Pittsburgh at 1:00PM. Add it to your schedule! hubs.ly/Q04BWYMV0
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Martin retweeted
If you're looking for the most detailed AND *entertaining* way to read about the php2shell bugs, the Calif post is epic: calif.io/php2shell/
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Martin retweeted
Let’s set the record straight: @lcfr_hax was the first to discover php2shell and develop a working exploit. See his August 5 tweet: xitter.cf/lcfr_hax/status/208503… His work convinced the PHP Foundation to invest in fixing this entire bug class. He then worked around the clock to review, test, and retest the patches.
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Martin retweeted
Do you know who illustrated the comic on calif.io/php2shell? Her name is Stephanie Cortes. And her husband is the hacker who discovered php2shell: @lcfr_hax. This artist-hacker couple has the best story, stay tuned!
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If you run PHP please: session.upload_progress.enabled = Off php_admin_flag session.upload_progress.enabled Off
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Attackers are using AI to move faster. Defenders can too. @HackingDave opened IANS New York on AI as a force multiplier. Not a replacement for analysts, but a way to do more with the team you have. See it in action with our team on the IANS NYC floor today.
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Not unsurprising at all. xitter.cf/joshua_saxe/status/211…
The big surprise of the 2022–26 era for AI security policy is how cyber damages to the public don't seem to have increased much due to AI. In fact, they've stayed on-trend with the industrialization-of-cybercrime growth rates we've observed since around 2015, with perhaps a small AI-causal bump. It's useful to think about the position of cybercriminals to develop an intuition for this: * Imagine you're trying to build a cybercrime business and you want to take advantage of AI automation. * How do you find and retain talented engineers who can build and operate the software/infra stack you'll need, given that they'll often have non-criminal alternatives with today's AI labor demand (even in middle-income countries where this demand also exists)? * Where are you going to rent space for your workforce to work? * Who are you going to hire who's willing to live there and live a life of crime? * If you're running your business remotely, how will you ensure honor among thieves and manage hiring and firing? * What's your strategy for evading law enforcement and bribing your way out of trouble? * How can you access AI inference in a stable way that allows you to innovate your work processes and tech stack? * Given all this, how will your quarterly automation goals compare to those of, say, a regional call center business in the American Midwest? There's a lot of nuance here (e.g., state and state-sponsored cyber attackers are a very different group; capabilities can get built up there and then unleashed discontinuously, and this needs to be considered). But overall, the demographic picture of cyber attackers means that folks should stop thinking of cyber attackers as a bunch of implicit MIT grads anxious to absorb the latest in automation to scale their businesses... (Below are some related charts on the demographics of cyberattackers from a blog post I'm working on.)
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Some of the best infrastructure improvements start with one very bad afternoon ⚠️ In the final installment of our blog series, @Bandrel walks through the configuration, release engineering, and pre-commit guardrails that came out of it. Read it now! trustedsec.com/blog/two-conf…
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I saw a lot of posts to this, I think there is a lot of confusion on this program in general. This isn't the generally available Daybreak Blue that you can go through verification for. This is the Daybreak Defense Network - only a handful of companies which allows for their advanced Daybreak Blue and Red models. It was a lengthy process to get approved, and we are integrating these capabilities into our offensive and defensive capabilities. Truly appreciate the folks at OpenAI working with us during this. As frontier models get a handle on appropriate safeguards and verification processes, I truly believe they should open these programs up to more companies and individuals in order for both research, offense, and defense to become stronger.
TrustedSec has joined the @OpenAI Daybreak Defense Network! Planned use of #Daybreak Blue and Red will integrate OpenAI GPT cyber models into our offensive and defensive security services, pairing it with the experience and judgment of our consultants. Announcement below 👇
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Martin retweeted
i'm back on the job market again - golang - mid level role - location flexible ⏰ pls rt for help ⏰
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You may have heard, we're now a part of #OpenAI’s Daybreak Defense Network—what does that mean for our customers? Go deeper, get to the evidence faster, and make real security improvements; in this blog, Founder & CEO @HackingDave explains how. Read now! trustedsec.com/blog/openai-d…
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Coding - yes. Software Engineering - no. In fact, we need more software engineers that understand fundamental technologies, cloud infrastructure, deployment, and more. We need more SWE that know how to prompt and build amazing products/solutions/applications. Prompting isn't going to fix this.
"Software Engineering Will Be Automatable in 12 Months," Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts that AI models will be able to do 'most, maybe all' of what software engineers do end-to-end within 6 to 12 months, shifting engineers to editors.
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Security is maintained through the combination of - people - technology - procedures Fixation on bugs as the sole element of security (offensive and defensive) is a category error. A profound misunderstanding of how systems work, and how they fail.
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Credential security is changing fast and we know you have questions! Drop them in the comments below and join @paulsems, @TechBrandon, and Jason Crawford on Wed, October 7 for "AMA: Passkeys and Preventing Credential Theft" to get answers. Register now! hubs.la/Q04yM-5n0
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We're hiring! TrustedSec is looking for a Hardware Security Consultant / Penetration Tester to join our team. If you're passionate about hardware security and hold your own in application security, this one's for you. Apply now! #infosecjobs hubs.la/Q04yGQGR0
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The truly impressive thing about the NetScaler RCE is just how many people and firms have been running their LLM bug hunting harnesses against that platform for months now. Citrix is also part of Glasswing and has its own internal efforts. Guess everyone isn't cooked?
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Martin retweeted
Dang this banner is a beast to get put together on your own. Good thing there were chairs in the booth space, and for still being in my 20’s. One of these is true! 😝 We’re here and looking forward to an amazing GrrCon!!!
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This week let’s look at Active Directory domain permissions which are configured on the domain root and apply to the domain. There are many different type of concerning permissions, but let’s look at the most egregious. Directory Changes & Directory Changes All – provides the ability to pull password hashes for users and computers (aka DCsync permissions). Change Owner – provides the ability to set the owner on the domain root and the owner has the ability to set permissions. Change Permission – provides the ability to set permissions on the domain root. Full Control – provides the ability to control any type of object in the domain. Full Control on Users and/or Computers – provides the ability to control the object type. I wrote a PowerShell script leveraging the Active Directory PowerShell module that can help identify these permissions on the domain root: github.com/PyroTek3/ActiveDi… For more on Active Directory permissions: hub.trimarcsecurity.com/post… specterops.io/wp-content/upl… For more on DCSync: adsecurity.org/?p=1729 Reference Article: adsecurity.org/?p=4941#more-…
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