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Your Plex Server Could Be Mining Crypto for Hackers

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Your Plex Server Could Be Mining Crypto for Hackers

Plex shipped a security update in August that closed a chain of bugs letting anyone who can reach an exposed Plex Media Server run code on it. In one detailed public account, a hobbyist who later stood up a vulnerable server as a honeypot says attackers used that same chain on Saturday to drop a crypto miner and residential proxy software that lets other people route their traffic through a victim’s home internet connection, essentially using it as a VPN without the victim’s knowledge.

The bugs were originally found by a security researcher who goes by ZM online. In a technical write-up published Thursday, ZM described an unauthenticated remote code execution chain he calls Plex2Shell. In short, an attacker with no real login can trick a server into handing over its owner’s admin token, then plant a malicious file that runs the next time Plex transcodes a video. The chain strings together four vulnerabilities tracked as CVE-2026-96652, CVE-2026-96654, CVE-2026-96655, and CVE-2026-96656. Affected servers are those running versions before 1.43.3.10861.

ZM reported the issue to Plex on July 27th. Plex acknowledged it and paid a $500 bug bounty on August 4th, the same day the fixed build became publicly available to download. On September 1st, Plex posted a public advisory and, according to BleepingComputer , emailed users still on older versions. “We recommend all server owners and Desktop users update to the latest version as soon as possible,” Plex wrote. The company also said it had requested CVEs, which were assigned on September 23.


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