Cybersecurity from Tokyo to Helsinki: The world goes offline to patch a PHP vulnerability

Critical PHP vulnerabilities, discovered with the help of artificial intelligence, triggered millions of exploitation attempts after technical details leaked before patches were ready. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince described a rapid surge in attacks, while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called it an extraordinary day and stressed the need for digital systems that can be maintained securely. Organizations raced to install updates, sometimes taking services offline: in Japan, the Finance Ministry and Meteorological Agency partially suspended online services, while Orange restricted access to some PHP-based sites and applications in France.