Exploited Vulnerability Exposes Nginx Servers to Hacking

A critical Nginx UI vulnerability that allows attackers to take full control of servers has been exploited in the wild.

Nginx UI (nginx-ui) is a web-based management interface for the Nginx web server. It has 11,000 stars on GitHub and it may be used to manage hundreds of thousands of deployments.

The software is affected by a vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-33032, which was patched recently in version 2.3.4. The issue relates to Nginx UI’s recently added AI (MCP) integration.

Pluto Security, whose researchers discovered and responsibly disclosed the vulnerability to Nginx UI developers in March, reported finding more than 2,600 internet-exposed instances.

The security firm showed how an unauthenticated attacker can exploit the vulnerability using specially crafted requests to take over Nginx servers.

Technical details and PoC exploit code have been publicly available.

Threat intelligence firm Recorded Future reported recently that CVE-2026-33032 was one of ...