Serious security vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language, one of the most widely used languages on the internet, have triggered a global race to protect websites from hacking, after governments and companies were forced to temporarily suspend some of their services, fearing that hackers would exploit these vulnerabilities.
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Technical analyses raise questions about the dual role of artificial intelligence, which helps in discovering security vulnerabilities, but may also allow attackers to exploit them more quickly.
Cross-border disruption
The repercussions of the security breaches extended from Japan to Kenya through Europe, where governments and companies rushed to suspend their electronic services as a precaution, in disruptions that revealed the wide potential impact of cyberattacks and the extent to which our daily lives depend on the internet.
Japan: Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi urged companies to temporarily suspend access to her websites, noting that her official website was briefly down until security updates were completed.
The repercussions were not limited to government institutions, as Alastair Gleeves, who provides communications services to small businesses, explained that the disruption was merely a temporary obstacle for institutions with large technical departments, while small businesses remained out of service for up to 7 hours.
The seriousness of the discovered vulnerabilities is due to the widespread use of the PHP programming language, which has been used for decades in developing and running web applications. It is an open-source language that, according to some estimates, powers about 70% of websites and electronic applications.
This language is used to run popular content management systems such as WordPress and Drupal, and forms an essential part of the software architecture of many platforms, so much so that some companies may not realize that their websites depend.
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