Never use these scripts on *.gov , *.mil , or any site without signed written permission. Even scanning for the vulnerability can be considered hostile in some jurisdictions.

Joomla 3.8.8 was a security release designed to patch several critical vulnerabilities present in versions 3.8.7 and earlier. The most notable "useful feature" or exploit fix included in this version was the mitigation of a vulnerability. Key Exploit Mitigation: RCE in com_fields

While the researcher's intentions were good, the public disclosure of the exploit had unintended consequences. The exploit was quickly picked up by malicious actors, who used it to compromise vulnerable Joomla sites.

To search for effectively:

Set up a GitHub code search alert for your domain name plus joomla or configuration.php . Attackers frequently dump compromised database credentials into public gists.

The most infamous exploit associated with Joomla 3.8.8 is , a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability affecting the core libraries/joomla/session/session.php file. Here is how it works: