Global website shutdowns follow AI-discovered PHP flaws
October 22, 2026 at 05:55 AM · Updated 1h ago
7 reports · 2 in Arabic, 5 in English · over 8 hours
What’s the PHP coding flaw that could pull down 70 percent of the internet?
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70 % من مواقع العالم في خطر.. ثغرة إلكترونية تشل 32 خدمة في لندن.. ماذا يحدث؟
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How did AI discover the internet's massive cyber-security risk?
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Websites across world hit by millions of attempts to exploit PHP code flaw
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استنفار عالمي عقب رصد ثغرة خطيرة تهدد 70% من مواقع الويب
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UK working to identify exposure after global cyber-security warning
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What is PHP, and how bad is the computer language flaw causing website shutdowns globally?
(opens the publisher’s site)Governments and major companies took systems offline Thursday after AI-discovered vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language threatened millions of websites worldwide.
- The PHP Foundation rushed its disclosure after details of the flaws leaked on social media, bringing forward the planned release.
- Amazon reported a PHP2Shell exploitation attempt against its honeypot systems on 17 October, before the disclosure embargo was lifted.
- The UK's National Cyber Security Centre urged PHP users to apply fixes, advising organizations to take systems offline if immediate remediation was not feasible.
- The Dutch cybersecurity agency, Finland's government and Wikipedia took websites offline as a precaution.
- The flaws, designated CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, were discovered by Wiz Research using artificial intelligence tools from OpenAI and Google.
- The vulnerabilities affect roughly 70% of global websites and allow attackers to execute remote code and take over servers.
- Millions of exploitation attempts have been logged since the disclosure, security experts reported on Thursday.
- The US National Security Agency warned the flaw could allow attackers to control web servers and steal data.
- South Korea activated emergency response measures, while China and Japan urged organizations to patch their systems.
- France and Belgium also took websites offline as a precautionary measure following the disclosure.
- The Internet Archive was reportedly affected by the PHP2Shell vulnerability that also forced Wikipedia offline.
- Wiz Research described the flaws as the most severe it had ever detected, while OpenAI called them among the most impactful in recent memory.