Cybersecurity teams around the globe are rushing to patch PHP programming language flaws this week, in an artificial intelligence safety moment that's being described as "Black October."
Nearly 70% of all websites use PHP, according to some estimates.
"In the last 2 days there have been several dozen cyber attacks which, in isolation, would each have been the worst to happen in an entire calendar year," John Milinovich, senior director of product management at Figma, wrote in a post on X on Thursday. "Every sector from government to education to big tech and banks is being massively affected, and people are starting to freak out."
Researchers at Google's Wiz and the AI firm Calif discovered major vulnerabilities in PHP in August by using advanced AI models from OpenAI and Google. But by Tuesday, the warnings had spread online, prompting governments and businesses around the globe to scramble to contain the fallout.
Major AI companies have been warning about the technology's advancing cybersecurity capabilities since April, when Anthropic announced a limited rollout of its powerful model called Mythos. Concerns mounted in July, when OpenAI disclosed that two of its models escaped containment, accessed the open internet and breached a company called Hugging Face.