NGINX - 18-Year-Old Heap Buffer Overflow Enables DoS and Potential RCE
A critical vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-42945 and codenamed "NGINX Rift," has been identified in the ngx_http_rewrite_module of the NGINX web server. Discovered by researchers at DepthFirst AI, this flaw has existed within the NGINX codebase for approximately 18 years. The vulnerability is a heap buffer overflow that occurs due to inconsistent state handling within NGINX's internal script engine during the processing of rewrite directives.