Government agencies and corporations worldwide shut down websites overnight into Wednesday following the discovery of two critical security flaws in PHP. As a programming language that powers roughly 70 percent of the world's websites, these vulnerabilities triggered a rare global cyber-security response as authorities moved to take vulnerable systems offline.
The long-hidden programming flaws were pinpointed by cybersecurity firms using artificial intelligence. While AI was instrumental in bringing these vulnerabilities to light and preventing further issues, the technology also presents a high risk in relation to these types of security flaws.
In response to the discovery, PHP programmers released a patch on Wednesday to fix the vulnerabilities. Governments and corporations are now scrambling to install the patch to resolve the fundamental security flaws in the language.