Podcasts · Cybersecurity Today

Black October: A Cybersecurity Today Special Edition

29 Oct 2026 · 27 min

Black October in Cybersecurity: PHP RCE Panic, Brotli Surprise, and Why Basics Still Matter In this special episode of Cyber Security Today, Jim and David discuss why the industry is calling the month "Black October," beginning with chaotic disclosure and leaked details of multiple PHP remote code execution vulnerabilities that triggered widespread anxiety and even service shutdowns by governments and other organizations.

They cover additional tensions from weak certificates issued by an intermediate CA in India, a breach disclosure by LiteLLM, and a major RCE initially thought to affect React/Node.js but later tied to Google's Brotli, which is widely deployed.

They note that while attacks began before patches and at least one European government was compromised, exploitation proved difficult and defenses often held, with limited confirmed victims so far. They argue AI is accelerating vulnerability discovery and democratizing capabilities, but emphasize "don't panic," focus on cyber hygiene basics, prioritize crown jewels, train staff, and address growing human fatigue as incident response capacity strains

00:00 Black October Begins 00:44 PHP Zero Day Chaos 03:51 More Hits Keep Coming 04:53 AI Hype And Reality 07:01 Exploitation In The Wild 09:15 Japan Breach Wave 13:23 Dont Panic Do Basics 15:38 Turn Crisis Into Budget 18:07 Training Beats Tools 21:21 Burnout On The Frontline 23:45 Know Your Crown Jewels 24:16 Final Thoughts And Outreach

The episode on the publisher’s site ↗ (opens in a new tab)