A critical flaw, found using AI

Governments and companies worldwide have rushed to emergency fixes, as researchers have reported a surge in hacking attempts online.

It comes as a critical PHP security flaw was found by security researchers through artificial intelligence (AI).

The code runs an estimated seven in every ten of the world's websites, as the PHP Foundation maintains the decades-old programming language.

On Wednesday, 21 October, the foundation released a fix while urging every organisation still running PHP to update without delay.

Some services are already offline due to the scramble to patch systems.

A police website in Paris was hit by the surge in hacking, as well as a sleep-tracking app for players of the mobile game Pokémon.

Already, Irish politicians have raised concerns about the risks posed by AI tools.

The reveal from this week proves that, as much as creating new flaws, those tools can just as easily expose old ones.

What caused the PHP security flaw?

Initially it was Wiz Research, an Israeli-American cloud security company, that identified the problem.

It said that PHP has acted as "a backbone of the web" since its creation in the early 1990s, when it was known as Personal Home Page.

The flaws, its researchers said, had gone unnoticed for more than ten years, coming to light only as recently as this year.

In August, the firm had begun using AI models from OpenAI and Google to search PHP's codebase.

How AI reshaped the hunt for the bug

Regarding the latest finding, OpenAI said it is "one of the most impactful vulnerabilities in recent memory."

The discovery, as per OpenAI, "marks a new phase, where AI can find security bugs with internet scale impact."

On the other hand, a separate firm, Calif, identified the same flaws during an OpenAI-funded audit of PHP's code, an audit which ran alongside Wiz Research's work, prior to the appearance of the public fix.

PHP security flaw FAQ

What is PHP?

Created in the early 1990s, PHP is a programming language.

At the time of writing, it powers an estimated 70% of the world's websites, Wiz Research said.

Has the flaw been fixed?

The PHP Foundation released a fix on Wednesday, 21 October, adding that anyone running PHP needs to update immediately.

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