Government agencies across Europe, Asia and North America took websites offline on Oct. 21 after OpenAI’s GPT 5.6-Sol AI model uncovered critical flaws in the PHP programming language, affecting up to 70% of the internet.
The two vulnerabilities, dubbed PHP2Shell, allow attackers to remotely run commands on servers without authorization, with security firm Wiz calling them among the most severe in software history.
The flaws were leaked before the intended release date due to Chainguard unilaterally breaking the embargo, prompting coordinated warnings from the NSA, FBI and global cybersecurity agencies advising organizations to take systems offline if patching was not immediate.
Exploitation attempts escalated rapidly, from thousands before public announcement to millions within two hours, according to Cloudflare, while Amazon Web Services confirmed broad exploitation in the wild.
The PHP Foundation has issued patches, warning that AI tools now find bugs faster than ever for both defenders and attackers – signaling that this incident is “just the beginning of a wider wave of attacks.”
Government agencies across Europe, Asia and North America urgently took down websites offline on Wednesday, Oct. 21, after artificial intelligence (AI) tools uncovered critical flaws in the PHP programming language that could affect up to 70% of the internet.
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