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AI Just Found A Bug That Puts Up to 70% of the World's Websites at Risk

Wsj • October 21, 2026

First, artificial intelligence heralded the Bugmageddon. Now it is triggering an all-hands-on-deck cyber emergency.

The creators of PHP, a technology that powers as much as 70% of the world’s websites, disclosed a critical security issue Wednesday that could be leveraged by hackers to take control of any system running its software. That would allow an attacker to steal information or launch a cyberattack on anyone visiting a hacked website.

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This article is one source in a clustered incident — the cluster page carries the summary, timeline and every other outlet covering it.

PHP2Shell: Critical RCE Vulnerabilities Prompt Emergency Patches Two critical vulnerabilities in PHP, tracked as CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, were disclosed on October 21, 2026, allowing unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE). The vulnerabilities, collectively known as PHP2Shell, affect all PHP installations serving web requests, including popular platforms like WordPress and Drupal. Exploitation attempts were observed as early as October 17, four days before the patches were released. The PHP security team released emergency patches for versions 8.2.35, 8.3.36, 8.4.27, and 8.5.12, but older versions such as PHP 8.1 and below will not receive official fixes. Organizations are urged to patch immediately or isolate affected systems to mitigate risks. The vulnerabilities were discovered by researchers at Wiz and Calif, with assistance from OpenAI's AI models. 785 sources 73

Extracted Entities

AI Just Found A Bug That Puts Up to 70% of the World's Websites at Risk

The full story

Extracted Entities

Attack Types (1)

Platforms (1)

Vulnerabilities (1)