More JFrog Artifactory bugs under attack, and all 3 have patches

If you're waiting for a sign to upgrade to a fixed version: this is it

JFrog Artifactory instances continue to get hit hard. Multiple attackers are exploiting three JFrog Artifactory bugs to gain administrative control over vulnerable instances - in some cases, just days after the vendor published a patch - and then using this illicit access to install malicious plugins and backdoors.

The three vulnerabilities are:

CVE-2026-42018 is a high-severity, improper authentication flaw that can return an internal anonymous-user token to an unauthenticated caller when anonymous access is disabled. An attacker can use this token to authenticate to the repository manager and then access sensitive resources. JFrog patched this vulnerability on August 12.

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CVE-2026-42016 is a high-severity privilege-escalation bug. Artifactory doesn’t properly validate the token’s scope, and this can allow an attacker with low-privileged access to elevate privileges and perform actions that they should not be allowed to do. JFrog fixed this one on July 27.

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CVE-2026-82329 is a critical authentication-bypass vulnerability that allows unauthenticated attackers with network access to obtain administrative privileges. JFrog published a patch for it on August 28.

Earlier this month, security researchers told The Register that miscreants began battering internet-exposed systems vulnerable to CVE-2026-82329 just four days after JFrog disclosed the bug. In addition to creating new administrative credentials, watchTowr’s honeypot network caught miscreants “enumerating users, groups, credential sets and federated access topologies,” said Yordan Ganchev, principal threat intelligence specialist at watchTowr.

The one thing everyone agrees upon is that attackers didn’t start exploiting any of these CVEs until after JFrog issued fixes.

In a Thursday report, Wiz security researchers “confirmed in-the-wild exploitation of all three vulnerabilities across multiple environments,” and noted that “patching velocity has been slow.”

JFrog has not responded to any of The Register’s inquiries about attacks against any of the three CVEs.

'Patching velocity has been slow'

Six weeks after JFrog disclosed CVE-2026-42016, 59 percent of organizations remain vulnerable, and 62 percent remain vulnerable to CVE-2026-42018 after four weeks. Organizations have been quicker to remediate the critical bug, CVE-2026-82329, although 49 percent remain vulnerable two weeks after its publication, according to Wiz.

Beginning August 15 and running through September 8, Wiz spotted “multiple” attackers chaining CVE-2026-42018 and CVE-2026-42016 against self-hosted Artifactory instances to gain admin access. Many of these intruders then dropped a custom Rust backdoor to establish command-and-control (C2) capabilities. 

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While the post-exploitation activity varies, Wiz reports observing attackers doing all types of mischief with their administrative access to compromised Artifactory instances, including establishing persistent admin accounts, installing Groovy plugins to achieve remote code execution on the server, executing shell commands run through the plugin to perform reconnaissance and scan for sensitive files, deliver second-stage payloads, and upload web shells.

Then, between September 1 and 8, Wiz saw “several” attackers exploiting CVE-2026-82329. These intrusions were not a “unified attack chain by a single threat actor,” but spanned multiple illicit behaviors including exfiltration of configuration details, establishing persistent admin accounts, token minting for long-lived credentials, stealing keys, attaching their own SSH keys to created users in some cases, and enumerating users, repositories, and tokens.

If you haven't already, patch vulnerable instances

Wiz advises - and we strongly concur - upgrading to a fixed Artifactory version as soon as possible.

“Given that exploitation may be possible remotely without authentication under the default configuration, organizations should prioritize internet-accessible Artifactory instances and restrict network access to trusted users and systems where possible,” the researchers added. “Organizations should also review Artifactory authentication and administrative activity for unexpected privileged access.”

These latest exploits follow a rough few months for JFrog's package management system, which has been under fire from both human and AI attackers.

OpenAI and JFrog revealed that OpenAI’s models broke out of their cages to hack Hugging Face by exploiting an Artifactory zero-day in July, and at Black Hat, the model provider said agents used Artifactory to build message boards and help each other access the open internet.   ®