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Posted by soheilpro 10 hours ago

Critical RCE Vulnerability in Apache HTTP Server(www.wiz.io)
255 points | 123 comments
jamesy0ung 6 hours ago|
Patch looks like https://github.com/apache/httpd/commit/5ed39287660daacd1233c...
acidburnNSA 1 hour ago||
Appears to be the first issue ranked 'critical' since 2021. https://httpd.apache.org/security/vulnerabilities_24.html
rurcliped 2 hours ago||
For anyone temporarily shutting off an Apache httpd, there's one step that's sometimes missed: a cron job or systemd timer for certbot. This can restart httpd and leave it running. In other words, in some common uses of Let's Encrypt, standard instructions such as "systemctl disable --now apache2" aren't sufficient to keep httpd off.
lionkor 5 minutes ago||
I would suggest instead blocking 80 and 443 on UDP and TCP, via your firewall.
bennofs 40 minutes ago|||
When using systemd, "systemctl mask apache2" can make sure that it's impossible for the unit to be started again (remove the mask with systemctl unmask once you've applied the patch).
0x0 1 hour ago||
If I need to make sure apache doesn't restart I often type "syntax error" on the first line of httpd.conf
throooooo 7 hours ago||
I have a lot of Linux sysadmin experience but haven't touched Apache in more than a decade. I thought it's mostly nginx or other solutions at this point.
hannob 4 hours ago||
Apache has a feature that no other http server has replicated: .htaccess files.

They provide limited configurability of server functionality within a webroot. That's extremely convenient for PHP webapps. For many PHP apps, deploying them on anything that is not apache means touching the server config itself.

account42 2 hours ago|||
I would say that's actually a misfeature as it requires too many additional filesystem lookups to fulfil requests.

Modifying the web server config is a nonissue outside of shared hosting, which should have died out with the advent of VMs/containers.

jagged-chisel 1 hour ago||
> … too many additional filesystem lookups …

Caching is a thing. Only dump the cache when a changed is noticed.

canibalrex 1 hour ago||
And now you have 2 problems..
Alghranokk 3 hours ago||||
Does not Microsoft's IIS also have that with web.config files?
joseda-hg 51 minutes ago||
Yes, but then you're dealing with IIS and why would you want that?
ransom1538 3 hours ago||||
Eh. You can use .htaccess in nginx too. I use that everyday.
cyphar 2 hours ago||||
Ah yes, htaccess. Another lovely source of security bugs for the past 30 years and may it continue to bear skiddie fruit for another 300.

Its model is fundamentally flawed precisely because it was based on the fundamentally flawed PHP model (website assets and code are stored and hosted from the same webroot). This allowed for shared hosting to exist but containers and reverse proxies are a far better way of organising such sites today.

The fact that in other webservers the server's configuration is configured through its configuration file and not the content of its webroot is a feature.

anonreplier 1 hour ago||
Yes apache has a config file too amazingly enough, .htaccess is optional
cyphar 1 hour ago||
The point I was making is that having alternative sources of configuration (coming from the contents being served no less) is a misfeature.

Really not sure how one could possibly read my comment as me saying htaccess is the only way of configuring Apache?

system2 4 hours ago|||
PHP can go to hell. My hair is gray because of it. Nginx is superior, and I can get anything imaginable done with config files. And not to mention, it's much faster.
ezst 3 hours ago|||
The http servers drag race finished 15 years ago on a tie, it's really much a matter of taste and familiarity more than performance at this point.
arcanemachiner 2 hours ago||
The lazy bastard in me prefers Caddy.
theandrewbailey 1 hour ago|||
I don't understand this. NGINX can run PHP. PHP is not exclusive to Apache.
Joel_Mckay 1 hour ago||
In general, the Apache php mod has had less drama than php-fpm over the years. Also, casting each domain under specific isolated itk server user(s) account(s) adds a layer of containment, where Nginx processes must run under a single user context.

Nginx uses way less memory in most use-cases (1/4 to 1/10), but with dynamic content like php it is only slightly better (maybe 15% if lucky). Also, setting up websocket proxy in Nginx is still a bit of a bodge.

Each server type has its own trade offs, and a list of known mitigations the uninitiated must learn. If you have a single domain high-traffic site with static media files, than Nginx is probably going to matter more. =3

nine_k 6 hours ago|||
Apache has plenty of life left, it just works™, supports almost everything, and currently is about as efficient as nginx WRT connection handling. Sometimes you want what .htacces gives you. (No built-in Lua though.)
iririririr 5 hours ago||
i mostly use nginx lua to patch on some feature i had even on bare Apache, let alone all the core modules.
orev 7 hours ago|||
At least 21% of web sites use Apache httpd, and of course many sites don’t report the software used at all. Nginx is also frequently used as a reverse proxy, with Apache used behind it.
nik282000 4 hours ago|||
My whole selfhosted mess is built around Apache. It was what I started with and I haven't run into any edge cases that it can't cover.
tasuki 2 hours ago||
Exactly the same for me! I could switch to Nginx, it's one prompt away probably, but why?
skeletal88 5 hours ago|||
Why would I not use apache if everything already works with it for me?
load-bearing 5 hours ago|||
Apache has mod_md -- an acme client, which lets you obtain https certificates as easily as on caddy, without integrating with awkward separate programs.

https://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/mod/mod_md.html

tyho 4 hours ago||
nginx has that too https://blog.nginx.org/blog/native-support-for-acme-protocol
dwedge 45 minutes ago||
There is a 7 year difference between those release announcements. Personally I've never liked nginx because of their attempts at monetising it, a lot of features are behind nginx plus which is really expensive and full of sales staff who try to reach out all the time, and when you start it, it says something along the lines of "Starting a high performance webserver" which always seemed strange
JodieBenitez 7 hours ago|||
At work we use Apache because of mod_shib. We have yet to try nginx-http-shibboleth.
throwaway7356 34 minutes ago||
One should stop using SAML anyway as that has its own collection of problems. We learned a lot about problems with cryptographic protocols in the last 30 years that cannot be fixed in SAML.
dawnerd 6 hours ago|||
Default Wordpress docker image uses it.
dizhn 4 hours ago||
I am the same way. I use Caddy if I can. But I have a lot of docker containers running apache and nginx. You probably might too.
account42 2 hours ago||
> in Apache HTTP Server’s HTTP/2 module (mod_http2)

I feel like in hindsight, HTTP/2 was a mistake. The theoretical benefits just don't justify the added complexity. It definitely shouldn't have been fasttracked like it was.

Woodi 1 hour ago||
But if you have more then one httpd server - eg. some fcgi - then HTTP/1.1 is almost architectural backdor: HTTP Request Smuggling, at minimum.

Apache even don't have it's own HTTP/2: mod_http2 use external library nghttp2[.org] so Apache is dead shell at this point.

mogoh 2 hours ago||
I don't think it was fast tracked. Was it? I heard the rational to do HTTP 2 and soon later HTTP 3 was to split improvements and ease transition.
mono442 2 hours ago||
HTTP/3 was the real mistake. It basically reimplements TCP on top of UDP and from my testing (at least the existing implementations) it generally performs worser then HTTP/2. Even when testing on somewhat a bit lossy connection.
thehamkercat 9 hours ago||
> What is CVE-2026-111497?

> CVE-2026-119618 is a critical, high-severity vulnerability involving....

two CVEs? (111497 != 11968)

kbenson 8 hours ago|
I saw that too. CVE-2026-111497 is the Brotli CVE, so my guess is they reused that prior page as a base to start with and missed changing that.
2bird3 8 hours ago||
You'd think they'd have an LLM reviewing this by now. On the up side, it is refreshing to see good ol' human error still around on the surface!
davisr 6 hours ago||
What makes you think it's not already an LLM error?
brabel 6 hours ago|||
Even a tiny model would pick up an error like this during review.
amluto 2 hours ago|||
Even a tiny model might, if promoted correctly.

Even the latest and greatest big models miss trivial errors when simply asked to review a chunk of text.

iririririr 5 hours ago|||
just had claude today spew some basic firewall rules for port 5900 and 5901... it used 5900 and 59001
spuz 5 hours ago|||
If you use modern LLMs a lot you'll know they are much better at catching these kind of copy and paste errors than humans are.
neurostimulant 3 hours ago||
Chances are most Apache/PHP installations run mpm_prefork and aren’t affected by this.
ezst 3 hours ago|
why? mod_mpm_event is what can be assumed to be the default since apache 2.4 (± 2012):

https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mpm.html#defaults

neurostimulant 2 hours ago||
IIRC popular apache/php platforms such as cpanel, official wordpress docker container image, etc use mpm_prefork by default.
spuz 5 hours ago||
I don't understand what they mean by "51% of cloud environments" have a publicly exposed instance. What is a "cloud environment"? Do they mean a cloud hosting provider like AWS or Google? Are they saying that between those two only one of them has an instance of a vulnerable Apache server running?
necovek 2 hours ago||
My guess is that they are collecting stats on running HTTP daemon software and thus they estimate that 64% of "cloud accounts" have Apache somewhere, and 51% of the total are publicly exposed instances (not on VPCs and such).

As they make a note that this does not account for configuration, so if you've got the http2 module disabled, it sounds like you are protected — though they only recommend hard-coding the protocol version to 1.1 instead of disabling the module (I've got the module disabled as that was the default when I set up my homelab server, for instance).

glawre 3 hours ago||
I think they’re likely referring to either a Cloud Org (AWS Organisation, Google Cloud Org, Azure Tenant).

Wiz works by plugging their tool into your Cloud Org, so presumably they’re saying 51% of their enterprise-y customers have an exposed instance.

klaas- 4 hours ago||
duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50453368
z3ratul163071 6 hours ago|
what is amazing, there are no apache updated containers / packages available yet.
Deukhoofd 5 hours ago||
Why are these things being disclosed before fixes have been rolled out? Is no-one following disclosure protocols any more?
yhjz 3 hours ago|||
Debian tracker: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-119618 - hopefully the fix lands soon
sherr 2 hours ago|||
Debian has been patched just now and updates available : apache2 2.4.71-1~deb13u1
hypfer 5 hours ago||
At least disabling http2 is an easy countermeasure that will probably in most setups not have any real downsides.

If it was even enabled that is.

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