The PHP Foundation, which coordinated fixes for two critical PHP flaws, operates on a shoestring budget with one full-time staff member and 14 contractors (Toby Sterling/Reuters)

The PHP Foundation, which coordinated fixes for two critical PHP flaws, operates on a shoestring budget with one full-time staff member and 14 contractors, according to Toby Sterling/Reuters. The discovery of these two serious vulnerabilities this week prompted a global effort to secure websites from hackers.

The FBI’s cyber division warned on Wednesday that the vulnerabilities could allow malicious actors to remotely execute code in PHP, which powers websites and web applications. This raised the risk of compromised networks and sensitive data, leading the agency to recommend that operators take websites offline if they cannot be updated immediately.

Qatar Tribune Business reports that governments and corporations worked through the night on urgent security updates following the AI-assisted discovery of the flaws in the programming language, which is vital to 70% of websites globally.

While many government sites appeared to be functioning normally Thursday, outages or limited service continued during security work. The prime minister’s office in Britain stated that some limited government services may be temporarily offline while addressing potential cybersecurity issues. A spokeswoman for that office said work has been undertaken across the government to identify and fix exposures, and experts are continuing to work with international partners and OpenAI on the matter.

Brief written by urgent.news from Techmeme, Qatar Tribune Business — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.