The PHP Meltdown Shows How AI Makes Bugs More Exploitable

Security researchers used AI tools to help uncover years-old vulnerabilities in the PHP web scripting language. Then the AI-assisted attacks began. As security teams and web admins scrambled this week to patch newly public PHP bugs, criminal hackers quickly attempted to exploit the flaws in the wild. Millions of exploitation attempts hit within hours of the vulnerabilities being published, according to analysis from Cloudflare--unsurprising given broad access to AI tools that can make it easier for attackers to quickly exploit flaws. So far, the nightmare scenario of mass victim takeovers and breaches hasn't come to pass.