The Gaurdian

The current US administration is an obstacle, but public demand for protection will ultimately prevail

Organisations around the world scrambled on Thursday to fix critical flaws in PHP, the software that powers much of the web. The vulnerabilities could allow attackers to take control of affected servers. Some websites were taken offline as a precaution while fixes were installed. The paradox is that while AI helped researchers uncover the flaw, it also threatens to accelerate the ability to exploit it. Amazon said that it had detected an attempt before the public disclosure of the PHP flaws.

What the episode highlights is AI’s central role in security – and not always for the right reasons. OpenAI’s models have also been responsible for two alarming hacks this year – a security breach of an Australian health department website and a raid by a swarm of AI bots on Hugging Face, an AI services platform. Citing those incidents, the AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, warned that a similar cyber-attack on the UK is “likely, if not inevitable”.

Websites around the world have been taken offline as governments and businesses scramble to fix a flaw in the computer language PHP. There are fears that hackers could exploit the vulnerability to steal data, take control of web servers and disrupt services. Millions of attempts have already been made to attack websites since the issue with the programming language was revealed, cybersecurity companies have said. Michael Safi speaks to global technology reporter Aisha Down

Websites around the world have been taken offline as governments and businesses scramble to fix a flaw in the computer language PHP. There are fears that hackers could exploit the vulnerability to steal data, take control of web servers and disrupt services. Millions of attempts have already been made to attack websites since the issue with the programming language was revealed, cybersecurity companies have said. Michael Safi speaks to global technology reporter Aisha Down – watch on YouTube

We’d like to hear from small businesses that have been affected by the PHP code flaw. Did you have to take you website offline? Did you manage to patch the fault?

Websites around the world have been hit by millions of attempts to exploit a recently discovered vulnerability in their code, cybersecurity companies have said, as the US National Security Agency warned the flaw could allow attackers to take control of web servers, steal data and disrupt services.

The problem in the PHP programming language, which underpins about 70% of the world’s websites, emerged on Wednesday causing governments and companies to pull their websites off the internet before they could be attacked and so they could patch the fault.

I’ve been banging the drum about these vulnerabilities for years. It will take more than a handful of exhausted developers to keep us safe

Parts of the internet are going dark. In the Netherlands, government websites, including its digital ID login service, have become unavailable. Finland has taken public services offline, and Wikimedia, the organisation behind Wikipedia, has switched off some of its systems too.

This sounds like the results of a cyber-attack. In most instances, however, the people running the sites deliberately switched them off because the alternative – keeping them online – was too risky. The future is here, and suddenly much of our digital infrastructure is looking very fragile.

Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World’s Favourite App

Problem in PHP language that underpins 70% of websites has led governments and companies to pull sites offline while they patch fault

Websites around the world have been hit by millions of attempts to exploit a recently discovered vulnerability in their code, cybersecurity companies have said, as the US National Security Agency warned the flaw could allow attackers to take control of web servers, steal data and disrupt services.

The problem in the PHP programming language, which underpins about 70% of the world’s websites, emerged on Wednesday causing governments and companies to pull their websites off the internet before they could be attacked and so they could patch the fault.

An estimated 70% of websites use the open-source language. What is the identified vulnerability in it?

Websites across the world have been taken offline in the past day as governments and businesses work to patch newly discovered vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language that underpins much of the internet. The exposed flaw would have allowed hackers to carry out cyber-attacks. What were the vulnerabilities and why did they affect so many sites?

Precautionary takedowns come as experts say bad actors could exploit vulnerability in language used by 70% of sites

Websites around the globe have gone dark after a serious vulnerability was found in a computer language used to build much of the world wide web.

Belgian, Dutch, Finnish, French and German sites were among those that governments took down temporarily as they scrambled to patch the critical weakness in PHP, a language used by almost 70% of websites.

Apparent attempt to hack Rade Bajić’s iPhone comes amid efforts to undermine landmark criminal case

A Serbian prosecutor who investigated the authorities’ allegedly illegal scheme to help the Trumps build a tower in Belgrade has been targeted with advanced spyware, expert analysis indicates.

The finding suggests a disturbing new element in the authoritarian Serbian regime’s campaign to undermine what is believed to be the first criminal case related to global moneymaking drive of the US president’s family, which critics describe as a “pay to play” scheme trading the Trump administration’s favour for business opportunities.

The tech company says successful AI worms need more capability on less powerful devices, but current trends make that feasible by the end of the year

Warnings about what artificial intelligence might do in the future – together with alarming reports of what it has gotten up to already – are being issued so quickly that even security experts have difficulty triaging what to worry about.

Yet a report this week from Anthropic’s offensive research team grabbed attention by describing a new, practical threat, one devoid of human characteristics or apocalyptic musings. The red team, as such internal testers are called, said it created a malicious AI program that spread autonomously through internet-connected “smart” televisions and could do the same inside other ordinary devices. While machines running AI usually need a fair amount of computing power, the researchers said that their program split parts of itself among 15 televisions and was still able to function by using a bit of power from each.

In the west the technology comes with at least some effort to provide security and a benign intent – not so from China

There is much to fear from artificial intelligence developed in China and handed to businesses and governments in the west almost free of charge.

Every month Chinese AI developers such as DeepSeek and Xiaomi dispatch the latest versions of their “open-weight” models that allow users to take the core software and use it without paying an expensive ongoing licence.

Westminster appears to be waking up to warnings over AI safety, with concerns over its use by extremist groups and bad actors

“I have this sense that, within a few months, AI is going to be all anyone is talking about,” said one cabinet minister, with an ominous stare.

It was Labour conference, with everyone from ministers to activists jubilant at Andy Burnham’s takeover and a bounce in the polls after the change of leader.

Whether it was youngsters proving their skills or state sabotage, Europe’s most hacked country was left with a mountain of waste after food began cooking in freezers

Shortly before midnight last Sunday, the digital thermostats controlling hundreds of supermarket cold aisles across France began to flicker and rise.

In a “bizarre and unprecedented” cyber-attack, hackers had remotely overridden the temperature settings on thousands of freezers, fridges and chiller cabinets pushing them from as low as -27C (-16.6F) to well over 50C (122F).

Kanishka Narayan, concerned by Australian incident, says British cyber defences could be bypassed by artificial intelligence agent

• UK politics live – latest updates

An AI-driven cyber-attack similar to the OpenAI breach of Australia’s healthcare system is likely, “if not inevitable”, in the UK, according to a senior minister.

Kanishka Narayan, the UK AI minister, indicated that the British government’s own cyber defences would be bypassed by a technology that has developed highly sophisticated skills in cybersecurity.

Appointment or renewal reminder appears in victims’ calendar to lure them into logging in to fake Google, Microsoft or PayPal page

You’re preparing for the week ahead and take a look at your Google calendar. There’s an entry for a meeting that you must have completely forgotten. The note that pops up when you click on it says you’ll be reviewing a project and includes a link to more details. Confused, you follow it to find out more; the website you land on asks for logon details, and you provide them.

Unfortunately, this was not a failure of your memory but a calendar phishing scam. You have handed your name and password to fraudsters who will sell it on in a batch with other people’s details, use it to break into your work email, or to persuade you that they are contacting you from your bank, or another institution.

We don’t accept drugs killing a few people because they cure most patients. Or a few planes crashing because most land safely. AI should be no different

OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman was asked to appear before the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence in Australia and explain how and why their agents have been hacking into multiple government websites. Altman didn’t turn up but sent Jason Kwon, his chief strategy officer, instead to answer the committee’s many tricky questions on its first day of public hearings on Tuesday.

The committee is conducting a comprehensive inquiry into the economic, societal, regulatory, and national security implications of AI for Australia. It will report back to parliament at the end of November. This is an unusually fast pace, but then it’s an unusually fast paced technology.

Push message claims fashion company’s data has been ‘fully compromised’, but website and app remain online

• Business live – latest updates

Asos is investigating after users of its mobile app received a notification claiming hackers had “fully compromised” the online fashion retailer’s data.

The value of Asos’s shares on the London Stock Exchange dived more than 14% after thousands of customers received a notification titled “Asos hacked” with a link that sent them to the Telegram messaging service.

David Robinson joins other insiders in urging industry to take more care over rapidly developing technology

A safety leader at OpenAI has quit the company, warning that its culture was broken and that AI firms were not “being nearly careful enough” about developing the technology.

David Robinson, who led the writing of safety reports that accompanied the ChatGPT developer’s product releases, explained his resignation in an essay headlined, “I quit OpenAI because its culture is broken”.

The need for independent regulation grows more obvious by the day. We must keep this tech in check before it’s too late

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me more than 16,000 times – as OpenAI agents did to a UN public data hub while repeatedly trying to find its way around the UN’s cyber-blocks – and perhaps it’s time to admit the system we have for keeping AI agents under control isn’t working particularly well.

The news about AI systems cropping up in places they shouldn’t sounds alarming. Though the description of these as “hacks” is perhaps overstating things, AI has exploited issues in IT systems that humans simply haven’t got around to finding. It’s also important to note that we shouldn’t be worried that the machines have suddenly become sentient and decided to rebel against humanity. There is not enough evidence to suggest that’s what is happening. The systems are simply following instructions and trying to complete the tasks they have been given, even if they’re sometimes finding unintended ways around obstacles to do so.

Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World’s Favourite App