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Microsoft Details Cookie-Controlled PHP Web Shells Persisting via Cron on Linux Servers

Friday, April 3, 2026 at 03:32 PM UTC·Source: The Hacker News

Updated: Friday, April 3, 2026 at 09:52 PM UTC

Executive Summary

Threat actors are increasingly using HTTP cookies as a control channel for PHP-based web shells on Linux servers and to achieve remote code execution, according to findings from the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team. "Instead of exposing command execution through URL parameters or request bodies, these web shells rely on threat actor-supplied cookie values to gate execution,

Analysis

Threat actors are increasingly using HTTP cookies as a control channel for PHP-based web shells on Linux servers and to achieve remote code execution, according to findings from the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team. "Instead of exposing command execution through URL parameters or request bodies, these web shells rely on threat actor-supplied cookie values to gate execution,
Source Attribution

Originally published by The Hacker News on Apr 3, 2026.

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