For more than a decade, two flaws sat in the code of PHP, the programming language behind 70% of websites. Every version released in that time carries at least one of them. Outside researchers flagged the problem in 2024, but no one could find a concrete way to use it in an attack, so it stayed unfixed. AI found that way in a matter of days.
Calif, a security firm, began an AI-assisted audit of PHP on July 30, with a researcher who knew the language’s history of flaws directing the AI. By August 1, the team had found several ways to make a server run an attacker’s code. Another firm, Wiz, used AI tools to find a flaw on August 19, and two days later its researchers ran code on WordPress and Drupal sites. Wiz describes the attack as a complex chain of steps, near the limit of what human researchers manage. It credits the most advanced AI models with lowering the barrier.
Running code on a server means the server follows the attacker’s instructions, which hands over the site and the data stored on it. The flaws, nicknamed PHP2Shell, let a stranger do this with no password and no click from anyone. On an online store, an attacker could swap the real checkout for a fake one and collect card details as customers pay. The NSA lists data theft, disrupted services and attackers moving deeper into a network among the risks. For a system that cannot be updated right away, it advises taking it offline.
Many operators did exactly that. Government websites in France, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands went offline while fixes were installed. In Japan, the airline ANA, the railway operator JR West and MUFG, the country’s largest bank, temporarily suspended some webpages and services. The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, took a number of systems down as a precaution.
The fix has to go on the server itself. WordPress.org says the flaws affect any server running PHP software, so updating WordPress or a plugin leaves them in place. Wiz calls updating PHP the only complete remedy. Fixed versions arrived on October 21, but a website is protected only once its web host installs one.
