PHP2Shell Exploit Attempts Hit Millions as Attackers Try to Deploy Mirai Malware

Threat actors have been observed unsuccessfully attempting to exploit the newly disclosed PHP2Shell vulnerabilities to rope infected systems into a Mirai botnet variant called Potassium, as it emerges that weaponizing the flaws may be harder than previously thought.

The attacks aim to exploit CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 (CVSS scores: 9.2), which can result in unauthenticated remote