Critical PHP Flaws Found With AI Push Governments to Patch Systems and Take Websites Offline

Government websites across Europe went offline on Wednesday as operators rushed to fix two critical vulnerabilities in PHP, a language running nearly 70% of websites whose language can be identified, according to W3Techs. PHP's developers said they would release patches, and EU cybersecurity officials told organisations unable to apply them to take affected sites offline. Both flaws score 9.2 out of 10 on the CVSS v4.0 scale; CERT-EU said this means attackers could run commands on a server remotely without a password. In Britain, a minister named Lloyd said 32 government services were unavailable and four partly so, largely as a precaution. Downing Street said on Thursday that no large public-facing critical services were affected. Kenya and the Netherlands were also responding. OpenAI's technology was used to find the flaws, and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre is working with it.

Right-leaning outlets had not reported the story at the time of writing; left-leaning and alternative outlets had. Alternative sources (BBC, Reuters) explain PHP and the flaws' severity. Left sources (New York Times, Guardian) focus on government and business responses, especially UK officials.