Hacker starten „Millionen“ von Angriffen, um eine weltweite PHP-Sicherheitslücke auszunutzen

Hacker have launched millions of attacks to exploit a critical security vulnerability in a fundamental building block of the internet, according to a major cyber services provider on Thursday. Cybersecurity authorities across the world were scrambling on Wednesday to respond to the vulnerability, which affects PHP, a foundational programming language powering 70 percent of the internet.

Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, an internet services provider used by many websites to defend against cyber attacks, stated in a post on X that "millions" of attempts to exploit the security flaw had been identified. "In the ten hours before the public disclosure of the security flaw, thousands of requests were recorded, meaning information must have leaked; in the 45 minutes after the disclosure, it was then tens of thousands, within two hours it was hundreds of thousands, and now millions," Prince said.

Amazon's cloud division also revealed that the vulnerability is "currently being exploited on a large scale". Numerous European government agencies have temporarily taken their websites offline as a precaution. French government websites, including those of the Ministry of Justice and the data protection authority, announced on Thursday morning that they were undergoing maintenance.

Matthijs van Amelsfort, head of the Dutch cybersecurity authority, told POLITICO that his agency had no indication that the vulnerability was currently being actively exploited, but added that this could change, especially as artificial intelligence could facilitate the exploitation of security flaws. The Dutch authority had taken its website offline on Wednesday, but it is now back online.