Websites go dark worldwide as AI exposes critical security flaws

WASHINGTON — Government agencies and companies around the world shut down websites Wednesday after two critical flaws came to light involving PHP, a programming language that is the basis for a large share of the internet. PHP sits underneath popular web design platforms, so the weaknesses potentially affect a vast range of websites, from online stores and news outlets to government services. Wiz, one of the security firms that found the issues, estimated that PHP runs about 70 percent of the world's websites and said the flaws rank "among the most severe vulnerabilities discovered in PHP, and arguably in software history." The US National Security Agency told organizations to patch immediately or pull vulnerable systems offline. The flaws "often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database," the NSA said in a statement on X. Attackers could use them to take over web servers without needing a password. Volker Dusch, a security engineer at the PHP Foundation, told the Wall Street Journal it was the most serious problem PHP had faced in more than a decade, comparing it to