Government websites down amid global security flaw scare
Numerous websites worldwide, including government pages, temporarily went dark following an AI-assisted discovery of critical vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language.
On Wednesday, developers of the popular open-source programming language issued an urgent security alert over "critical remote code execution vulnerabilities." The flaws could allow hackers to take control of affected websites, prompting the release of urgent fixes, with all PHP users "strongly encouraged to update immediately."
Global Response
Multiple cybersecurity agencies worldwide issued their own alerts, including the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, and others. Organizations unable to update immediately were advised to take their systems offline until fixes could be applied.
France's Interior Ministry temporarily shut down prefecture websites, while Belgium's Foreign Ministry took similar action. In the Netherlands, the National Cyber Security Centre, websites of major political parties, and at least one port went offline. Denmark's national school communication platform and Finland's government public web services also experienced disruptions.
AI Discovery
The flaws in PHP were identified by cybersecurity companies Calif and Wiz in August, who kept the discovery under wraps to prevent exploitation. They extensively used AI models including Google's Gemini 4 Argon and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol in the process.
The underlying flaws had been present for decades, but demonstrating their exploitability required an exceptionally complex chain of steps, at the edge of what human researchers could practically achieve.
OpenAI described the case as "one of the most impactful security issues in recent memory," predicting more flaws would be discovered with AI's help in coming months.
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