PHP Threat Is Likely Far From Over, Despite Limited Exploitation So Far: GuidePoint Expert

October 22, 2026 - Published on CRN

The threat of attackers potentially exploiting a pair of critical-severity PHP vulnerabilities could persist for some time, even though the initial evidence of exploitation of the PHP2Shell flaws appears to be modest, according to a threat intelligence expert at GuidePoint Security.

The widespread usage of PHP-and the difficulty faced by some organizations around identifying every service that leverages it-could mean that attackers will continue to seek exploitation opportunities for months to come, GuidePoint's Justin Timothy told CRN Thursday.

Despite the limited exploitation so far, "the PHP2Shell vulnerabilities and their exploitation definitely have the potential to be a Log4j-Log4Shell kind of scenario," said Timothy, threat intelligence consultant at Reston, Va.-based GuidePoint Security, No. 32 on CRN's 2026 Solution Provider 500.

"We saw the effects of that for months afterwards," Timothy said. "I'm afraid that we're going to be seeing the same kind of trailing [impacts]-where people haven't patched and threat actors are exploiting it [for some time]."

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