{
  "id": 16244848,
  "title": "‘Black October’: cybersecurity experts sound the alarm over new era of AI-enabled hacking",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/23/black-october-cybersecurity-experts-sound-the-alarm-over-new-era-of",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-23T18:48:48.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Guardian Technology",
    "slug": "guardian-technology",
    "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/23/cybersecurity-ai-hacking-php-vulnerability"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Cybersecurity leaders are warning of a looming \"vulnerability tsunami\" as artificial intelligence uncovers previously unknown weaknesses in the PHP programming language. The discovery of a severe bug in PHP has sparked concern that AI tools will expose even more fundamental security issues in global internet infrastructure. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, joined the alarm, stating that patching all bugs may no longer be feasible. According to researchers, AI has the unique ability to identify security flaws at an unprecedented scale and pace, potentially overwhelming the security community's ability to address them promptly. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, likened the situation to a \"code red\", while Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince warned that it would feel \"like the sky is falling.\" The PHP vulnerability, which may have left millions of websites vulnerable for years, was identified using AI assistance. While some experts estimated that up to 70% of all internet sites were at risk, attempts to exploit the flaw began almost immediately after its discovery. Government and private websites in the US and UK temporarily disabled their PHP-based systems to apply patches. The National Security Agency (NSA) issued an alert urging sites running on PHP to implement the fixes promptly. Despite the severity of the issue, malicious cyberactors may attempt to exploit the bugs to gain unauthorized access to servers, steal sensitive data, disrupt services, or infiltrate networks further. AI security platform Wiz researchers described the flaw as \"among the most severe vulnerabilities discovered in PHP, and arguably in software history,\" noting that it had been present for decades but required an exceptionally complex chain of steps to demonstrate its exploitability.",
  "summary": "After discovery of severe bug in the PHP programming language, executives warn of ‘vulnerability tsunami’ Leaders in cybersecurity are sounding the alarm after the discovery of a major vulnerability this week. They are predicting that artificial intelligence tools will expose more fundamental weaknesses in global internet infrastructure in the months to come. “I no longer think we’re going to be…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}