AI Just Found a Bug That Puts up to 70% of the World’s Websites at Risk

Artificial-intelligence tools helped find one of the most severe online bugs ever. Cyber experts are racing to patch it before hackers use AI to exploit it.

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.

Security researchers found the vulnerability using AI. Now web administrators are scrambling to protect themselves from the vulnerability, which cutting-edge AI systems could quickly exploit. Some say they are pre-emptively taking their sites offline.

The issue, dubbed PHP2Shell, represents a class of problems in the way PHP manages a computer’s memory. It can be exploited in many ways, some requiring just a few seconds, by hackers who could use it to run unauthorized software on any unpatched web server.

It is the most severe security issue that PHP has faced in more than a decade, according to Volker Dusch, a security engineer with the nonprofit foundation that manages the PHP project. He likened it to Heartbleed, a similarly widespread vulnerability that forced a global race to protect hundreds of thousands of servers more than a decade ago.

...

Ryan Austin, a researcher at Calif, uncovered the flaws with help from GPT-5.6 Sol, one of OpenAI’s most advanced models, during an audit of PHP’s source code in August. OpenAI funded that and other audits, part of an effort by AI companies to help open-source...

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Web server - Nginx 1.18.0
OS - Ubuntu

Code is custom built by John off ASP.net on the back-end.

Site cert is issued by Sectigo. Public Server Authentication CA DV R36

Looks like cert expires in November.

FR has not had a software or user interface upgrade in how long? 20 years?

Fr was doing what facebook does since before facebook

FR’s JimRob should have been the billionaire.

But he didn’t want to “sell out to ‘the man’” or something. I tried to talk to him about it personally but he wouldn’t budge.

And after decades we can’t even get a ‘like’ button

Personally, I appreciate the simplicity of this site.

Everyone once in a blue moon, I like a post enough that I wish I could “like” it, but instead, you can just reply and compliment the person who posted it.

I was once on the front edge of what is now being called “Social Media” (that term was not being used back when I dabbled in development) including a kind of social scoring, and was working on giving users their own customizable profile pages with post feeds and shared content, and I also could have become a billionaire if I made the decision to pursue it instead of bailing out because of how crappy I found out users were being to each other. I have no regrets.

Who needs a bunch of bells and whistlers and bedazzling?

The functionality is simple but serves to make the content itself more important.

And after decades we can’t even get a ‘like’ button

I'm not impressed with "like" buttons - what's the point? If I like a post I either reply with a +1 or comment specifically on what I liked in agreement with the poster.

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