The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) issued an alert about a global exploitation campaign targeting vulnerable content management systems (CMS) and plugins.
The government agency says that many Australian businesses have already been affected by the malicious activity, with webshells being deployed on their sites.
Webshells provide persistent access to the compromised sites and allow threat actors to disrupt services, steal credentials, plant additional malware, and move deeper into the network.
“A large-scale exploitation campaign is targeting various vulnerabilities in content management systems (CMS) globally, including in Australia, with many small- to medium-sized Australian businesses impacted,” the ACSC warns.
“As part of this campaign, malicious cyber actors are actively scanning websites for opportunities to deploy webshells, leveraging various vulnerabilities affecting CMS software and plugins.”
According to the agency, the activity leverages flaws in several CMS platforms and plugins, including WordPress, Craft CMS, MaxSite CMS, MetInfo CMS, and Joomla JCE. ACSC lists the following products exploited in the campaign:
- Simple File List (WordPress) – CVE-2025-34085/CVE-2020-36847
- WavePlayer (WordPress) – CVE-2025-12057
- BerqWP (WordPress) – CVE-2025-7443
- WPBookit (WordPress) – CVE-2025-7852
- Ninja Forms (WordPress) – CVE-2026-0740
- ThemeREX Addons (WordPress) – CVE-2026-1969
- Breeze Cache (WordPress) – CVE-2026-3844
- pay-uz (WordPress) – CVE-2026-31843
- ACF Extended (WordPress) – CVE-2025-13486
- Sneeit Framework – CVE-2025-6389
- WPvivid Backup (WordPress) – CVE-2026-1357
- Gravity Forms (WordPress) – CVE-2025-12352
- GutenKit/Hunk Companion (WordPress) – likely CVE-2024-9234
- Craft CMS – CVE-2025-32432
- MaxSite CMS – CVE-2026-3395
- MetInfo CMS – CVE-2026-29014
- Joomla JCE – CVE-2026-48907
The ACSC noted that the campaign might be supported by AI, which typically helps threat actors accelerate attacks and scale the exploitation of emerging flaws.
Website administrator are recommended to apply the latest security updates for their CMS, themes, and plugins, remove unused components, and enable automatic updates where possible.
It is also recommended to make web directories read-only when possible, monitor for unauthorized file creation, restrict access to sensitive directories, and block unexpected spawning of child processes on the web server.
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