AI expose critical flaw in PHP powering 70% of websites

Artificial intelligence tools helped uncover a critical memory-management vulnerability in PHP, a programming language that powers up to 70% of the world’s websites.

The Flaw: The issue (dubbed PHP2Shell) involves how PHP manages computer memory, potentially triggering an out-of-memory (OOM) condition that leads to memory corruption and unauthenticated remote code execution.

AI Discovery: Researchers used AI tools—including models like OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol—to find the flaw, which affected legacy code that had been largely forgotten.

PHP

The Current Risk: Cyber experts and web administrators are urgently racing to apply security patches before malicious actors leverage AI systems to rapidly scale and automate exploits.

Real-World Impact: Some government and commercial site operators in Europe and elsewhere preemptively took their websites offline following the disclosure to prevent mass breaches.

Official Guidance: You can review the alert and recommendations on the National Cyber Security Centre.

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