AI Just Found a Bug That Puts Up to 70% of the World’s Websites at Risk
The fixes address flaws rated 9.2 out of 10 that could let attackers take over servers, and officials urged immediate patching or shutdowns.
- At 03:02 UTC on Wednesday, October 21, Cloudflare deployed protective WAF rules to block critical PHP2Shell vulnerabilities affecting around 70% of websites, activating filters across all plans.
- AI-Driven security research uncovered two critical PHP vulnerabilities that had remained hidden in the codebase for over a decade. Wiz Research and other firms warned these findings rank among the most severe in software history.
- Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince reported that exploit attempts surged from thousands in the 10 hours before announcement to millions afterward, while Amazon Threat Intelligence detected probing activity as early as October 17.
- The European Union cybersecurity agency, ENISA, advised "organisations to take immediate action" as government services in the UK, France, Denmark, and Finland temporarily suspended websites to install emergency patches.
- Cybersecurity experts warn these vulnerabilities represent "early tremors" of future disruptions driven by AI-assisted exploit development. Cloudflare and the Electronic Frontier Foundation expect increased threats as automated tools lower barriers for adversaries.
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Attackers could exploit these vulnerabilities to access systems without a password, steal data, modify website content,
AI is exposing how fragile the web really is. What you can do to stay safe
The vulnerabilities were around for years — more than a decade — but researchers were only able to understand how hackers could take advantage of them with the help of AI. The vulnerability, called P2PShell, impacts a coding language that powers 70 percent of the world’s websites, enabling hackers to remotely execute code or gain …
A flaw in the software that runs the sites allows a hacker or worse to a cyber collective linked to state actors like Russia to enter without password. The Agency for National Cybersecurity: eight out of ten sites have not yet installed the update
PHP2Shell: AI-Found PHP Flaws Put Millions of Sites at Risk
PHP2Shell is a pair of critical PHP runtime flaws that AI-assisted researchers turned into working exploits after the bug sat unresolved since 2024. Patches cover PHP 8.2 and newer, while about 48% of PHP sites with a known version run older branches.
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