Hacking – PwnDefend

From TimThumb to wp2shell: 25 Years of WordPress Mass…

TL;DR: wp2shell (CVE-2026-63030 chained with CVE-2026-60137) matters because it is a core, pre-authentication RCE reachable on a stock, plugin-free install. That is the rare category. In 25 years, unauthenticated code execution against a bare WordPress install has happened only a handful of times. The overwhelming majority of WordPress mass compromise has ridden the plugin and theme supply chain and infrastructure abuse, not core. This post maps the history so you can see where wp2shell actually sits.

Vulnerabilities

WP2SHELL Update

This morning I’ve started to see exploitation attempts on pwndefend.com (they all failed because like about 80% of sites (based on sampling) this site automatically patched, but also, this site has word fence, is fronted by Cloudflare.

Global Exposure

On the 18th (AM) I did sampling of about 3.5K hosts and found ~20% were not patched. The cyber apocalypse is not seemingly here today! (let alone the fact that if every WordPress site was popped, the world would probably not end)

Threat Intel

Bleeding Out

When you compromise a firewall you have lots of options in terms of next steps, from using the VPN, changing configurations, creating backdoors or perhaps using the firewall to PCAP. In this post I’m going to explore the ‘Fortibleed’ campaign. I have to note, we can see in honeypot logs this TA did not seem to limit themselves to Fortinet exploitation, however the area of analysis has a heavy Fortinet element. You will see they deployed a capture and analysis platform. Treat everything with a pinch of salt because I’m using a mad probability based machine (LLM) to support me for this!

Vulnerabilities

CVSS Scoring is fun they said!

Ok, fun things to learn about me, I don’t like CVEs or CVSS because my brain can’t really read them! I have the same challenge with some server naming standards. I need something like SRV-UK-ADDS-01 if it’s not goy hyphens I need a tool to read them for me! (true story!). So lets look at CVSS (I know I’m full of fun topics).

When AI goes wrong…

Ok so as I’m writing this I’m currently on a temporary ban from twitter…. the reasons for this I believe are more complex than one would expect. Full disclosure, I’m assuming the ban was in part due to AI but that is an assumption… but it’s the only realistic explanation I have. You might be thinking, who cares…. but bear with me….

Education

Passkeys are better than passwords!

The future is here today! Ok, perhaps that’s a bit over dramatic, however there’s one thing in cyber security that is and has always been a general problem: Passwords! So enter the lord and saviour of all cyber security: Passkeys! (ok, they aren’t but they are cool and useful in a range of scenarios!) Let’s take a deeper look.

Threat Intel

FortiSIEM CVE-2025-64155 Exploitation Analysis

‘An improper neutralization of special elements used in an OS command (‘OS Command Injection’) vulnerability [CWE-78] in FortiSIEM may allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute unauthorized code or commands via crafted TCP requests.’

https://www.fortiguard.com/psirt/FG-IR-25-772

This analysis was conducted using data from Defused, enrichment from IPINFO and SHODAN and then analysis using an LLM (GROK) (so take the analysis with a pinch of salt):

Education

A tech demo – Gyroscope & Accelerometer Detector

Ad tech is a threat that really doesn’t get much airtime! So let’s do quick demo:

Threat Intel

SMSBlasters Historic Incidents

Whilst some people go on about DNSSEC, PUBLIC WIFI and JUICE JACKING they seem to be missing out on a threat that is real, active and has seen increased adoption by threat actors. SMS BLASTING!

Sounds cool, but basically it’s an ISMSI Catcher/Fake CELL network that is broadcasted between 500m and 2Km that lets an attacker send SPOOFED SMS messages to any cell that connects. This can be used for scams, phishing etc.

Leadership

The danger of internet exposed RDP

There’s lots of things in cyber security to consider when looking at how to defend a network, and whilst the world goes mad about public wifi and juice jacking, the real threats are often far simpler. Imagine having say an Active Directory domain member, or even controller exposed to the internet with Remote Desktop Protocol? Might sound insane but this is a common route for entry for ransomware actors.