What is PHP and why did it spark a global cyber-security scramble?
For more than a decade, serious flaws had gone undetected in the technology underpinning much of the internet.
It took AI to bring them to light and caused a global cyber-security alert.
Researchers who helped surface the vulnerabilities in PHP – a popular server-side programming language used in web development for decades – warned platforms which use it could be exposed to potential hacks.
Governments and cyber-security agencies rushed to contain the fallout, urging website owners to check if their sites were affected and, if so, install updates to patch the issue or consider going offline.
There have been no reports of any successful exploits of the flaw, coined php2shell, so far.
But in the days since the issues came to light, disruption to sites and services has continued to ripple around the world.
