Major online services take sites offline following critical AI-discovered flaws in PHP

UPDATE - follow-up to Websites taken down across Europe ahead of critical cyber-security update: Governments and organisations across the globe have taken websites offline following the release of a software fix for two major flaws found in the PHP programming language. Researchers from Calif and Wiz used advanced artificial intelligence made by OpenAI to uncover the vulnerabilities, which they note had gone undetected for more than ten years. Wiz described the issues as the most severe ever found by AI, while OpenAI termed it one of the most impactful security issues in recent memory.

Official Response

National cyber-security agencies in the UK, EU, Australia, Japan, and the Netherlands have told organisations to quickly apply updates or take their websites offline. The Finnish government shut down its public web services temporarily, and Dutch agencies took their websites and parliament pages offline. In the United States, the White House stated that federal agencies are checking potential impacts on government systems and critical infrastructure while working with AI labs to speed up a fix.

Affected Sites

The Finnish government, Edinburgh council, and the BBC are among those that took down pages ahead of the update. Edinburgh council's site and online pages for BBC programmes like Doctor Who and The Traitors became inaccessible, though they have not confirmed a link to PHP and the BBC has approached them for comment. Platforms like DeviantArt stated they were down for maintenance without giving a reason. Cyber-security firm Wiz estimated that roughly 70 percent of the internet is affected, though the BBC could not verify that figure. CERT-EU stated the flaws could impact all versions dating back to PHP 5, which launched in 2004.

Context

Programming languages like PHP act as the invisible foundation that runs millions of websites and online applications across the internet. When deep technical flaws are found in such widely used software, it forces a massive, urgent scramble by governments and tech firms to patch systems before hackers can exploit them.