NGINX Rift attackers waste no time targeting exposed servers
Attackers are quickly exploiting a newly disclosed vulnerability in NGINX known as 'NGINX Rift.' This flaw, which has existed for 18 years, allows unauthenticated attackers to crash NGINX worker processes through crafted HTTP requests. While the risk of remote code execution is limited by modern security configurations, the number of exposed servers remains a concern for security teams.
- ▪The vulnerability, CVE-2026-42945, is a heap buffer overflow affecting both NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus.
- ▪Researchers observed exploitation attempts just days after the vulnerability was disclosed.
- ▪Approximately 5.7 million internet-exposed NGINX servers are running potentially vulnerable versions.
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| Original publisher | The Register |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/05/18/nginx-rift-attackers-waste-no-time-targeting-exposed-servers/5241851 |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 15:02:00 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T13:04:56.494Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T13:04:56.494Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | oRKVWZi_cv3N |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); Security NGINX Rift attackers waste no time targeting exposed servers Researchers say 18-year-old flaw already being probed and exploited just days after disclosure Carly Page Carly Page Published mon 18 May 2026 // 14:02 UTC Exploit attempts are already hammering a newly disclosed NGINX bug dubbed "NGINX Rift," proving once again that attackers read patch notes faster than most admins.Researchers at VulnCheck said they are seeing active exploitation tied to CVE-2026-42945, a heap buffer…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Register.
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