Pentest-Tools.com Releases Free Scanner for NGINX 9.8 Flaw as Exploitation Hits 18-Year Exposure
Updated
Updated · IT Security Guru · May 20
Pentest-Tools.com Releases Free Scanner for NGINX 9.8 Flaw as Exploitation Hits 18-Year Exposure
6 articles · Updated · IT Security Guru · May 20
Pentest-Tools.com made a no-login scanner free for CVE-2026-42945, letting organizations check internet-facing systems for vulnerable NGINX versions after active exploitation was confirmed.
CVE-2026-42945, or NGINX Rift, affects standard NGINX builds from 2008 to May 2026 and can be triggered with a single unauthenticated request to crash servers or, in some cases, enable remote takeover.
F5 issued patches on May 13 for NGINX Open Source 1.30.1 and 1.31.0 and NGINX Plus R36 P1, but warned that container images and Kubernetes ingress controllers often need separate updates.
The scanner uses version-based detection, so results are marked unconfirmed; F5 also offers a configuration workaround, though it requires manually auditing rewrite rules across deployments.
DepthFirst found the flaw through AI-powered source-code analysis in April, highlighting how automated tooling is surfacing long-hidden bugs in widely deployed open-source software.
AI found an 18-year-old NGINX flaw. What other critical bugs are hiding in plain sight across the internet’s core infrastructure?
With its main security gateway unpatched, is the Kubernetes ecosystem facing a permanent remote code execution risk at its edge?
As AI automates both cyberattacks and defense, are we entering a new era of high-speed, autonomous cyber warfare?
Between May 13 and May 20, 2026, the public disclosure of NGINX Rift (CVE-2026-42945) triggered a critical cybersecurity crisis as attackers rapidly exploited this severe vulnerability. NGINX Rift is a memory corruption flaw—a heap buffer overflow in the ngx_http_rewrite_module—with a high CVSS score of 9.2, making it a major threat to the widely used NGINX web server. The vulnerability’s exposure led to urgent responses from vendors and security teams, highlighting the risks posed by such critical flaws in essential internet infrastructure and the need for immediate patching and mitigation.