NGINX Rift attackers waste no time targeting exposed servers

Researchers disclosed an 18-year-old heap buffer overflow in NGINX's rewrite module ("NGINX Rift", CVE-2026-42945) that can crash worker processes and, on systems without ASLR or with specific rewrite configurations, potentially enable code execution; a public proof-of-concept and active exploitation attempts were observed days after disclosure, while scans show millions of potentially vulnerable NGINX instances, prompting urgent patching.