Hacking attempts rise after PHP flaws found; some sites still offline

Hacking attempts have gone up since two critical flaws were found in PHP, a widely used programming language, NPR reports. Governments around the world are rushing to put safety measures in place. NPR says the vulnerabilities are "severe" and affect 70 percent of websites. Al Jazeera also puts PHP use at more than 70 percent of websites.

Some sites remain offline. The New York Times reports that governments and businesses in Kenya, the Netherlands and other countries were scrambling to keep hackers from exploiting the flaw. CNBC says European government sites were among those that went dark.

PHP developers published an advisory on Tuesday about the two flaws, The Verge reports. France 24 says PHP programmers released a patch on Wednesday. CNBC also says a fix was deployed. NBC News reports that global authorities recommended sites go offline temporarily until the fix was in place.

Al Jazeera reports that AI was used to find the vulnerabilities. France 24 says cybersecurity firms used AI to do it. CNBC says servers running PHP were exposed and millions of websites have data at risk. The New York Times says the disclosure raised concerns about AI's potential to upend cybersecurity unless its shortcomings are addressed.