Multiple vulnerabilities across IBM products
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CERT-FR advisory covering numerous vulnerabilities in IBM AIX, Cognos, Db2, Informix, Sterling, WebSphere and related products enabling RCE, privilege escalation and DoS.
CERT-FR has published a coordinated advisory documenting multiple vulnerabilities across a broad range of IBM enterprise products. The affected products span operating systems (AIX, VIOS), databases (Db2, Informix), middleware (WebSphere Application Server), analytics (Cognos), security tools (Security SOAR, QRadar Plugin), and integration platforms (Sterling family). The vulnerabilities enable remote code execution, privilege escalation, denial of service, server-side request forgery, cross-site scripting, data confidentiality and integrity breaches, and security policy bypass. IBM published security bulletins between September 11 and 17, 2026, with patched versions specified for each affected product. Organizations running any of these products must consult the corresponding IBM security bulletin to identify affected versions in their environment and apply patches.
Mentioned in this report
Detection guidance
WebSphere Application Server Java Process Spawning Shell or Download Utility (Windows)
WebSphere's java.exe spawning cmd, PowerShell or LOLBin download tools, which is typical of post-exploitation after remote code execution against the application server. Auto-generated starting point — validate and tune in your environment before deploying. IOC matches can false-positive on shared infrastructure and decay as adversary infrastructure rotates.
title: WebSphere Application Server Java Process Spawning Shell or Download Utility
(Windows)
description: Detects the IBM WebSphere Application Server JVM spawning command interpreters
or download utilities. This is a common post-exploitation pattern after RCE or webshell
deployment on the app server. Generalises on the parent/child relation, not specific
payloads.
tags:
- attack.initial-access
- attack.t1190
- attack.execution
- attack.t1059
- attack.persistence
- attack.t1505
logsource:
category: process_creation
product: windows
detection:
selection_parent:
ParentImage|contains: \WebSphere\
ParentImage|endswith: \java.exe
selection_child:
Image|endswith:
- \cmd.exe
- \powershell.exe
- \pwsh.exe
- \wscript.exe
- \cscript.exe
- \certutil.exe
- \bitsadmin.exe
- \mshta.exe
- \rundll32.exe
condition: selection_parent and selection_child
falsepositives:
- Administrative or deployment scripts intentionally launched by WebSphere server
processes (for example wsadmin or start/stop wrappers)
- Application-specific batch jobs invoked from deployed applications
level: medium
id: 9f122773-c49f-530b-affb-180736783b51
status: experimental
author: Vorant
references:
- https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/avis/CERTFR-2026-AVI-1206
WebSphere Application Server Java Process Spawning Shell or Network Tool (Linux/AIX)
WebSphere JVM spawning a shell, curl/wget or netcat, indicating possible exploitation of the app server or a webshell. Auto-generated starting point — validate and tune in your environment before deploying. IOC matches can false-positive on shared infrastructure and decay as adversary infrastructure rotates.
title: WebSphere Application Server Java Process Spawning Shell or Network Tool (Linux/AIX)
description: Detects the IBM WebSphere Application Server JVM spawning a shell or
download/network utility on Linux. This is suspicious post-exploitation behaviour
following RCE against the middleware.
tags:
- attack.initial-access
- attack.t1190
- attack.execution
- attack.t1059
- attack.persistence
- attack.t1505
logsource:
category: process_creation
product: linux
detection:
selection_parent:
ParentImage|contains: /WebSphere/
ParentImage|endswith: /java
selection_child:
Image|endswith:
- /sh
- /bash
- /dash
- /ksh
- /curl
- /wget
- /nc
- /ncat
- /python
- /python3
- /perl
condition: selection_parent and selection_child
falsepositives:
- Server start/stop or health-check wrapper scripts spawned by WebSphere processes
- Applications deployed on WebSphere that legitimately shell out for batch tasks
level: medium
id: 517e59ac-c92a-5576-8944-61297fdd9277
status: experimental
author: Vorant
references:
- https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/avis/CERTFR-2026-AVI-1206
Behavioural rules are generated from public reporting — validate in your environment before deploying.
Source reporting: https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/avis/CERTFR-2026-AVI-1206
What this brief leaves out
This page is the free tier: the write-up, the severity, the names. In the app the same report carries its extracted indicators, its detections (Splunk SPL already written, plus Elastic and Microsoft KQL where they apply), the actors and CVEs it names as live profiles, and the vendor research on the same campaign — the primary source the news paraphrased, cited and read directly.
It sits in a corpus of 13,854 reports from 146 sources, 616 of them written in the last seven days, and it grows through the day.
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