Websites shut down globally after AI finds cybersecurity flaw affecting 70% of the internet

Global websites pause services as PHP security patch rolls out

Activelifezero.com – Public agencies, businesses and major online platforms temporarily restricted access to some services as operators moved quickly to address two serious vulnerabilities in PHP, one of the web’s most widely used programming languages.

The security issue, known collectively as PHP2Shell, affects software that supports an estimated 70% of websites worldwide, including sites built with WordPress and Drupal. The PHP Foundation released fixes after the flaws were identified, urging administrators to update affected systems without delay.

Artificial intelligence played a significant part in finding and examining the vulnerabilities, which had remained unnoticed in PHP’s code for more than a decade. Security researchers said the episode demonstrates how advanced AI tools can speed up both the discovery of software weaknesses and the creation of working attack methods.

Government services briefly affected

In the United Kingdom, nearly three dozen government services became unavailable during security work, while four others were operating with partial limitations. Minister Elizabeth Lloyd told the House of Lords that the disruption was linked to the effort to upgrade systems.

“No large public-facing critical services are being affected by the exercise but some limited services may temporarily be offline while security work is carried out,” a UK government spokesperson said.

Similar precautionary measures were taken elsewhere in Europe. Government websites in France, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands were briefly removed from public access while technical teams implemented protections. The Dutch cyber security agency was among the affected sites.

Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten said his cabinet was closely following developments surrounding the PHP vulnerabilities. In Japan, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi urged organizations to determine whether their public-facing sites use PHP and to be ready to install the patch as soon as possible.

“Please check if your publicly available websites use PHP, and prepare to apply the fix patch that will be released tonight… as soon as possible,” Takaichi wrote on X.

She also said businesses should consider temporarily suspending services where needed to lower their exposure. Japanese companies including ANA, JR West and MUFG reported limited interruptions to webpages or services during the response.

Why the flaws matter

PHP began as “Personal Home Page” and grew into a core technology for building and operating websites. Its broad reach means a vulnerability in the language can create risk across government portals, retailers, publishers, booking systems and customer-service platforms.

The PHP2Shell flaws could enable attackers to gain access to websites and inspect computer memory. That memory can contain sensitive material, including passwords. Cloudflare warned that the weaknesses could be used for remote code execution, service disruption and exposure of customer information.

Nigel Green, chief executive of financial advisory firm deVere Group, said the scale of PHP’s use makes the situation important for consumers as well as organizations.

“With PHP behind such a vast share of the web, the exposure could reach almost everywhere people spend money online,” Green said.

“Booking platforms, marketplaces, subscription services, ticketing sites, delivery apps and utility portals could all be holding card details on systems built with the same kind of code,” he added.

For users, a temporary outage can be frustrating, but it may also indicate that an operator is taking preventive action. Keeping a site offline briefly while applying security updates can reduce the chance that attackers exploit an exposed system before it is fixed.

AI accelerates security research

Teams at OpenAI, Wiz, Calif and the PHP Foundation were involved in the work surrounding the vulnerabilities. Wiz researchers used Google’s Gemini 4 Argon, Wiz Atlas and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol during the research process.

Researchers found the flaws in late August, but public disclosure was delayed until Wednesday so that a patch could be prepared. This coordinated timing gave website operators a way to address the problem rather than simply learning of the risk without an available remedy.

Wiz described the event as an “AI inflection point,” emphasizing that AI assisted researchers in interpreting the weaknesses and developing a functioning exploit. The company characterized PHP as a foundational part of the internet and said modern AI models can substantially reduce the time needed for complex security investigation.

“What AI changed was the ability to understand the weaknesses and turn them into a working exploit,” Wiz researchers wrote.

“With frontier AI models and the right tools, a single researcher completed in a week what previously would have taken a world-class team months of work,” they added.

The comparison made by researchers is to Heartbleed, the 2014 security bug that affected widely used encryption technology. Like that earlier incident, PHP2Shell illustrates how a defect in a common technical component can have consequences far beyond any single website or company.

Media and nonprofit platforms take precautions

Ireland’s The Journal temporarily went offline Thursday morning while it strengthened its defenses. The outlet is Ireland’s second most-used online news source, behind national broadcaster RTÉ, in Reuters Institute rankings.

The Wikimedia Foundation also began responding to the PHP issues. The nonprofit, which operates Wikipedia, said it had taken down some systems as a precaution while addressing the vulnerabilities.

Organizations using PHP now face a straightforward but urgent task: identify affected systems, apply the newly released security updates and verify that public-facing services are protected. The widespread, short-lived shutdowns reflect the challenge of securing technology that underpins so much of everyday internet activity.