Post Syndicated from Daniele Molteni original https://blog.cloudflare.com/zero-wire/
You run security at your organization. It’s 7:00 am, and you’re having breakfast. You receive a ping: a new critical vulnerability has been disclosed. Your team scrambles to compare vendor advisories, read technical research, check which systems run the affected software, and answer familiar questions from the business: are we affected, and what are we doing about it? Another disclosure arrives before that work is finished.
AI is changing both the volume and speed of critical vulnerability discovery. It can analyze large codebases at scale and surface deeply nested flaws that may have existed for years without being found through human review. That discovery momentum will put more pressure on security teams to understand the impact of each disclosure on their infrastructure.
To help security teams prepare, today we’re introducing Zero Wire: a public vulnerability intelligence feed on Cloudflare Radar, bringing the clarity of a news wire service to critical security developments. It helps security leaders and practitioners understand significant vulnerabilities and decide what to do next.
How it works
Zero Wire lives inside Cloudflare Radar under the security section.
Each briefing brings together a plain-language explanation of the vulnerability, who should investigate it, recommended actions, and links to the evidence and vendor guidance. The format is deliberately simple: an index card with what you need to know, without the drama. A CISO should be able to understand the issue quickly and ask the right questions. An engineer should be able to follow the same briefing to the technical guidance needed to investigate and remediate it.
We also offer a pre-compiled prompt you can use with your agent to assess the impact on your infrastructure. Cloudflare contributes security research, observations from our network, and practical knowledge of the controls that can help reduce exposure. The information is useful whether or not you are a Cloudflare customer.
Zero Wire brings that context together with authoritative external sources, giving readers a starting point for assessment and a place to return as an issue develops.
Our focus
Rather than a catalog of every CVE, Zero Wire complements vendor advisories and vulnerability databases, linking readers to the evidence and technical guidance needed to act. Zero Wire focuses on critical CVEs in Internet-facing software, such as vulnerabilities in web applications, the runtimes and libraries they depend on, and services exposed to the Internet, where a proxy can help mitigate exploitation.
We select significant issues that security teams need to understand and assess. Each briefing explains the potential impact, which deployments should be investigated, what is known about exploitation, and the available mitigation and patching guidance. A vulnerability’s severity and evidence of active exploitation are distinct: readers need both to make informed decisions.
A dedicated Cloudflare protection, such as Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules, is not a prerequisite for inclusion. Some issues require vendor updates or changes beyond the traffic Cloudflare can inspect. Where Cloudflare controls can help, we explain their scope and configuration requirements.
A walk through Zero Wire
Start on the Zero Wire homepage. Each card introduces an issue, identifies associated CVEs where applicable, and summarizes why it matters and what to do. You can search for a published briefing using a CVE or issue name, and follow technology tags to related entries. One briefing can cover several related CVEs when understanding them together makes the response clearer.
Find what needs attention
The homepage separates briefings into two categories. “Needs attention” brings together issues requiring active assessment or action, including those with known exploitation or developing guidance. “Reference” keeps briefings available when guidance has stabilized. Moving to “Reference” does not mean every affected system has been patched: an older vulnerability can still matter to an organization that has not completed remediation.
The status and last-checked date help you interpret each card. Known exploitation, an ongoing investigation, and an available vendor fix describe different things. Read them alongside the briefing’s evidence rather than treating them as a verdict on your own environment.
Understand what happened and who should investigate
When you open a briefing, the overview tells you what happened, why it deserves attention, and which teams should investigate. The explanation connects the technical issue to its practical consequences, such as service disruption or risk of data exposure.
For example, the recent php2shell vulnerability concerns flaws in the PHP runtime. That distinction matters for teams running applications such as WordPress or Magento: updating application code or a plugin alone does not repair the underlying runtime. The briefing helps readers identify the right system owners and directs them to the PHP security guidance for affected versions and remediation.
Turn the briefing into an action plan
What to do now gives your team a short set of next steps. Depending on the issue, that can mean identifying affected deployments, checking versions with a hosting provider, applying vendor updates, reviewing suspicious activity, or keeping compensating controls in place while patching.
The purpose is to make the next conversation concrete. For a PHP deployment, ask which runtime is actually running, whether the vendor’s fix has been applied, and who owns the update. Follow the linked vendor advisory for detailed applicability and remediation instructions, which can change as the investigation develops.
Assess your exposure with an AI agent
In this section, we share a prompt that can be used with your AI agent to quickly assess the impact on your infrastructure. The prompt asks for a read-only assessment of deployed software, relevant vendor fixes, exposure, and compensating controls, with per-asset evidence, unknowns, and next actions. It helps your team investigate its own environment; copying the prompt does not itself scan or change systems.
Check the evidence and follow what changed
To help you learn more about the vulnerability, each briefing links to external documents such as CVE records, research, and relevant exploitation evidence, including CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog. These sources answer different questions. A vendor advisory establishes affected versions and remediation guidance. An exploitation report provides evidence of attacker activity.
If applicable to a briefing, Cloudflare can add context about traffic seen on our network, for example by showing traffic matching WAF rules that indicates exploitation attempts. Those distinctions matter. Observing an attack attempt does not establish that a particular organization was compromised. Equally, a lack of observed attempts on Cloudflare’s network does not establish that exploitation is absent elsewhere. Briefings distinguish what the sources establish from what remains unknown.
Where available, charts add context to that evidence. The php2shell briefing shows the volume of HTTP requests matching Cloudflare WAF managed rules over time. Note that requests matching these rules are not a count of compromised systems or successful exploits; the chart aims at providing practitioners a sense of what the focus level is by threat actors on a particular vulnerability.
Finally, update chronology records important developments, such as new advisories or changes to the evidence and response guidance. Together with the last-checked date, it helps returning readers understand what has changed since their previous visit.
Understand Cloudflare’s role
The Cloudflare section provides links to whether we offer compensating controls or provide a way to mitigate the vulnerability impact on your infrastructure.
If a particular CVE can be addressed with a WAF rule, the briefing reports its availability and essential configuration requirements. When applicable, paid Plans and free Plans links take customers to the relevant dashboard configuration. The next step is explicit: “Review your WAF configuration to determine whether you are protected”. A link allows you to review your security posture, it does not automatically enable a rule or verify a deployment.
Note that a WAF mitigation is a compensating control for the traffic it covers, it is not a replacement for fixing vulnerable software. Blocking the requests can prevent exposed data from reaching an attacker, but it cannot undo actions already performed at the origin. The security teams should always follow the vendor remediation guidance.
Stay informed with Zero Wire
A useful vulnerability briefing should leave you with a clearer understanding of the issue and a concrete next step. Day Zero brings those essentials together: what happened, who should investigate, what to do now, and where to find the evidence.
Visit Zero Wire vulnerability intelligence, share the relevant briefings with the teams responsible for your systems, and return for new entries and updates. When the next disclosure arrives, we want you to spend less time assembling the basic facts and more time acting on them.
Follow Cloudflare Radar on X @CloudflareRadar and Bluesky @radar.cloudflare.com for updates.
