Websites around the world are being taken offline after a researcher using AI discovered a critical security issue in the PHP programming language, which could allow attackers to remotely control web servers.
PHP is used by almost 70 per cent of websites, according to cybersecurity firm Cloudflare, and underpins popular platforms such as WordPress and Magento. The flaw, dubbed #php2shell, has prompted organisations to scramble to fix the issue.
Government Services Affected
Downing Street said on Thursday that some "limited" government services may temporarily be offline while work is carried out to address potential cybersecurity issues.
The announcement came as organisations worldwide rushed to patch the vulnerability, which was identified by a researcher using AI.
Exploitation Attempts Surge
According to Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince, there was a dramatic surge in attempts to exploit the issue once it was announced.
He wrote on X: "Some stats on #php2shell. In the 10 hours before it was publicly announced, across the @Cloudflare network we saw thousands of attempts to exploit it. That jumped to tens of thousands in the 45 minutes post announcement, hundreds of thousands within 2 hours, and millions now."
The scale of the threat has led to websites being taken down as a precautionary measure, with the focus now on applying fixes and restoring services.
