CVE-2026-42018

CISA Adds Four Actively Exploited Vulnerabilities in GitLab, ConnectWise ScreenConnect and JFrog Artifactory to KEV Catalog

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added four vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog after confirming active exploitation in the wild. The flaws affect GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition, ConnectWise ScreenConnect, and JFrog Artifactory. CVE-2026-85706 allows unauthenticated path traversal in GitLab’s commit API, enabling arbitrary file reads. CVE-2026-84869 in ScreenConnect permits unauthorized file transfer and execution over active remote sessions. Two additional issues in Artifactory, CVE-2026-42018 and CVE-2026-42016, can lead to token leakage and privilege escalation. Federal agencies have been directed to apply mitigations and investigate potential compromises by specific deadlines.

Attackers Chain JFrog Artifactory CVEs for Rapid Admin Takeover and Backdoor Deployment

Real-world attacks against self-hosted JFrog Artifactory have chained multiple CVEs to escalate from unauthenticated requests to full administrative control. Attackers achieved persistence by installing malicious Groovy plugins, executing shell commands, and deploying Rust-based backdoors within minutes. The primary chain relies on CVE-2026-42018 and CVE-2026-42016, allowing anonymous token acquisition and privilege escalation without proper scope validation. A separate critical flaw, CVE-2026-82329 with CVSS 9.8, enables direct authentication bypass and admin token creation on default configurations. Patches are available across multiple 7.x branches, and defenders are urged to audit logs for anonymous admin actions and inspect for unauthorized plugins and binaries. The incidents highlight risks to software supply chains when artifact repositories are compromised.