- Engineer — Act: Critical unauthenticated RCE in the PHP runtime itself affects all sites regardless of application code; exploit attempts are already being observed. Patch to PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, or 8.2.35 immediately and verify no webshells were dropped on exposed servers.
- SOC/IR — Act: Active exploit attempts against web servers running PHP create an assume-breach window before patching completes. Hunt for anomalous child processes or file-write activity from web server PHP processes since patch release, and scan for newly created webshells in document roots.
- Leader — Plan: PHP2Shell affects any organization running PHP-based web services and active exploit attempts narrow the patching window significantly. Confirm engineering has inventoried PHP versions in production and is treating this as an emergency patch cycle this week; escalate to leadership briefing only if exploitation is confirmed in your environment.