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

Global Websites Pause Services as PHP Security Fixes Roll Out

Earthguardiansonline.com – Government portals, media sites and major company services temporarily went offline in several countries as operators moved quickly to address two critical flaws in PHP, one of the web’s most widely used programming languages.

The vulnerabilities, known collectively as PHP2Shell, were identified with assistance from artificial intelligence tools. They affect software that supports an estimated 70% of websites worldwide, including installations built on WordPress and Drupal. The PHP Foundation has issued patches and urged administrators to update without delay.

For many organizations, taking selected systems offline was viewed as a precaution while security work was completed. The incidents highlighted how a flaw in foundational web software can create immediate disruption across public services, commerce and online publishing.

Public services affected during upgrades

In the United Kingdom, nearly three dozen government services became unavailable while upgrades were underway, while four others operated only partially. Government minister Elizabeth Lloyd told the House of Lords that the interruptions were connected to the security response.

“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 told reporters.

Elsewhere in Europe, public websites in France, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands were temporarily removed from service as fixes were deployed. The Dutch cyber security agency was among the affected sites.

Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten said his cabinet was closely watching developments around the PHP vulnerabilities. In Japan, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi urged organizations to examine whether public-facing sites relied on PHP and to prepare for the patch.

“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,” she posted on X Wednesday.

Takaichi also said businesses should consider suspending services when necessary to limit potential exposure. Japanese airline ANA, railway company JR West and banking group MUFG were among organizations that temporarily halted some webpages or services.

Why the flaws matter

PHP began as an abbreviation for Personal Home Page and has grown into a core technology behind a vast number of online services. Because it is embedded in so many websites and applications, the potential impact extends well beyond the organizations that publicly acknowledged disruptions.

The two bugs had existed within the software for years. Security researchers said attackers could potentially use them to gain access to websites, inspect computer memory and retrieve sensitive material such as passwords. The flaws could also enable remote code execution, service interruptions and exposure of customer data.

That risk is especially significant for websites handling account logins, payment information or other private customer details. Booking services, marketplaces, subscription platforms, ticketing operations, delivery applications and utility portals may all depend on systems built with PHP.

“With PHP behind such a vast share of the web, the exposure could reach almost everywhere people spend money online,” said Nigel Green, chief executive of financial advisory firm deVere Group.

“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.

The US National Security Agency and Europe’s cybersecurity agency advised companies to act immediately. Their warnings reflected the unusually broad reach of the underlying technology and the possibility that unpatched systems could become targets.

AI accelerates security research

The security issue was discovered in late August but was not publicly disclosed until Wednesday, after a fix had been prepared. Research teams from OpenAI, Google-owned cybersecurity firm Wiz and cybersecurity company Calif participated in uncovering the flaws.

Wiz said artificial intelligence was central to finding weaknesses that had remained buried in the PHP codebase for more than a decade. The company characterized the episode as an “AI inflection point,” suggesting that advanced models can substantially speed up the work of identifying and validating serious security problems.

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

The researchers described PHP as a “backbone of the web” and said a single researcher, equipped with frontier AI models and suitable tools, could accomplish in a week work that previously might have required months from a top-tier team.

“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.

Wiz researchers used Google’s Gemini 4 Argon, Wiz Atlas and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol during the investigation. Cloudflare worked with the PHP Foundation, Calif, OpenAI and Wiz on the response.

Precautionary shutdowns spread beyond government

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

The Wikimedia Foundation also began addressing the PHP security problems. The nonprofit, which operates Wikipedia, said it had taken down a number of systems as a precautionary measure.

Such temporary outages can be frustrating for users, but they can also give technical teams time to apply patches, check systems for signs of misuse and restore services with stronger protections in place. For website owners, the immediate priority is to establish whether PHP is in use directly or through a hosting platform, content-management system or internal application.

Wiz researchers compared the scale of the issue with Heartbleed, the 2014 bug affecting widely used encryption technology. That earlier incident demonstrated how vulnerabilities in common internet infrastructure can require rapid, coordinated action from software maintainers, hosting providers and site operators worldwide.

The PHP2Shell response reinforces the same lesson: routine software maintenance can become an urgent public concern when the affected code sits beneath a large part of the internet. Organizations that have not yet completed updates face pressure to patch quickly, assess exposure and keep users informed if essential services must be temporarily limited.