Government websites go dark after AI-discovered PHP vulnerability sparks global scramble
European government agencies and other operators took websites offline on Wednesday following the disclosure of critical flaws in the PHP programming language uncovered by artificial intelligence tools.
Developers release urgent security fixes
The creators of PHP issued new patches on Wednesday to address vulnerabilities that had existed in their software for years. They urged all users to update immediately because hackers were already exploiting these flaws. Experts warned that a wave of intrusions could follow as the fix became public knowledge.
AI accelerates the race to exploit
Artificial intelligence tools can now reverse engineer the bug with little effort, creating a race for attackers to gain an advantage. Costin Raiu of TLP: Black stated that hackers aim to compromise every vulnerable web server on the internet before patches are widely deployed. This situation puts systems relying on PHP versions from the last two decades at significant risk.
Vulnerable platforms face massive impact
The PHP language supports major content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, which means many public-facing sites are affected. Tiffany noted that any server using a version of PHP released in the last 20 years is potentially vulnerable to these issues. The widespread nature of this code ensures that critical vulnerabilities have enormous knock-on consequences for the global web.
Reported by one outlet
Only one outlet has published this. Nothing here has been checked against a second report, so read it as that outlet's account and follow the link below for the original.
Reported by
1 independent outlet. Headline as published. Links open the original report.