Two severe vulnerabilities affecting PHP versions back to 5.4 have been disclosed.
While the PHP Foundation released patches for PHP 8.2 and newer, older versions remain exposed, prompting security advisories to isolate internet-facing applications.
How the problem was discovered
The case began on Tuesday after an anonymous tip on the Hacker News platform about issues that allowed unknown parties to remotely execute commands without a password. The PHP Foundation, the group that maintains the language, officially confirmed the flaws and called on administrators to take immediate action.
Experts from security firm Wiz said the flaw had been around for more than a decade, calling it one of the most serious vulnerabilities ever found in software. Notably, the flaws were discovered using artificial intelligence models from OpenAI, as well as research teams from Wiz and Calif. The PHP Foundation also accused Calif of accidentally leaking a video showing a test attack before the official update.
Who is affected and what is the solution?
According to British cybersecurity authorities, the issues affect PHP versions going back to version 5.4. The PHP Foundation has released fixes, but they only cover versions 8.2 and later.
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For older systems, some vendors are offering temporary fixes, but researchers say upgrading to the latest version of PHP is the only complete solution. The US National Security Agency and its European counterpart, CERT-EU, are recommending that organizations take their systems offline or isolate applications that are exposed to the internet if they cannot immediately apply an update.
The market mobilization and the first attacks
Major tech companies including Google Cloud, Amazon AWS and Microsoft have teamed up to fix the problem. Cloudflare has rolled out new protections and announced that it has detected the first attempted attacks, while OpenAI and Wiz have warned that artificial intelligence tools can make it easier for malicious users.
On the internet, platforms such as Wikipedia and WordPress are directly affected, with Wikipedia issuing continuous updates and warning of possible temporary outages. As a precautionary measure, the Dutch National Cybersecurity Center temporarily took its website offline.
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