Hackers launch millions of attempts to exploit PHP flaw, but exploitation proves difficult
Cyberattackers have made millions of attempts to exploit a critical vulnerability in PHP, a foundational programming language that underpins 70% of the internet, according to Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince. In a post on X, Prince said his company saw thousands of attempts in the ten hours before the flaw was publicly announced, suggesting information had leaked. Within 45 minutes of the announcement, attempts surged to tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands within two hours, and are now in the millions.
Amazon’s cloud division has also warned that the flaw is now being broadly exploited in the wild. However, two top European cyber officials told POLITICO that hackers have so far struggled to successfully exploit the vulnerability. Thomas Caspers, vice president of Germany’s cyber agency BSI, said his agency has seen attacks but no successful use of the flaw by hackers. “It seems a little bit more complicated than expected to exploit,” he said.
European agencies respond cautiously
Caspers noted that before the patch was released, officials expected a much faster track from attackers. “An ad hoc exploitation seems a little more difficult than expected,” he said. He suggested the challenge may be linked to major AI providers building guardrails so their tools cannot be used to exploit flaws. When POLITICO tested ChatGPT and Claude, both declined to provide information on exploiting PHP vulnerabilities.
Numerous European government departments took websites offline as a precaution. As of Thursday morning, key French websites such as the justice ministry and data protection authority still displayed maintenance messages. Matthijs van Amelsfort, head of the Dutch cybersecurity agency, said his agency has no indication the flaw is being actively misused, but that could change, particularly because AI makes it easier to exploit flaws. The Dutch agency took its website offline on Wednesday, and it is now back up.
