Governments Warn of Two Critical PHP Flaws Found With AI Help; Some Sites Taken Offline

Authorities in Europe, Asia and other regions temporarily took some government websites offline this week to guard against two critical vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language that powers a large share of the internet, Al Jazeera reported. On Wednesday the U.S. National Security Agency issued a rare public warning advising organizations to prepare for an update and to take sites offline if they could not patch immediately. The FBI's Cyber Division also posted a warning Wednesday about the two flaws in the language used for websites and web applications. Germany's digital ministry took some sites down as a precaution, France's Interior Ministry deactivated local administrative office sites, and Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and the Czech Republic shut sites to apply a patch. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also warned of the risk. The flaws, dubbed PHP2Shell, were found with artificial intelligence models. Calif, working with OpenAI, reported the first on August 11; Wiz, owned by Alphabet, reported the second.

The left-leaning New York Times, as shown in its headline and excerpt, frames the discovery around AI finding a critical vulnerability and the concern that AI could upend cybersecurity unless shortcomings are addressed. Alternative outlet Al Jazeera leads with the international response, citing the NSA, European ministries and Japan's prime minister, and covers the AI-assisted discovery. Right-leaning Newsmax leads with the FBI's warning. All three agree the PHP flaws are critical; the differences lie in emphasis, with AI, government action and U.S.