Artifactory flaws chained in attacks deploying backdoor malware

Threat actors are actively exploiting a chain of vulnerabilities in JFrog Artifactory, specifically CVE-2026-42018 and CVE-2026-42016, to bypass authentication and escalate privileges to admin level. Attackers use the initial access to create administrator accounts, generate long-lived tokens, and deploy a Rust-based backdoor for persistence. Additional post-exploitation activities include deploying webshells, stealing configuration data and credentials, and enumerating repositories and users on compromised systems.

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