Cybercrime: Cloudflare reports millions of attacks on PHP security vulnerability – Intelligence controller warns
The internet company Cloudflare is recording a rapid increase in attempted attacks. Cybersecurity politicians speak of a "turning point". Experts say what needs to be done now.
Berlin – A major internet outage caused by a security flaw has raised concerns among cybersecurity officials. Marc Henrichmann, chair of the Bundestag's Intelligence Oversight Committee, told the Handelsblatt: "We are witnessing a turning point." Artificial intelligence (AI) is turning previously negligible vulnerabilities into "real open doors" in a short time.
The source of the problem is a newly discovered serious security flaw in the widely used programming language PHP. PHP underpins much of the global internet, from simple blogs to major news portals, large online stores, and content management systems like WordPress. Security experts have classified the vulnerability as highly critical.
Henrichmann warned: "This is one of the most serious security flaws in recent years." It affects a large portion of the world's websites and constitutes a "problem for the entire digital infrastructure." Besides Huntress IT security company and the PHP security team, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has also issued a cybersecurity alert and official warning.
Hackers could initiate massive attack campaigns and subsequently take control of websites or steal sensitive customer data.
Written by urgent.news from Handelsblatt's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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