Safety Net Creator Playbook Trending Now Mashable Selects Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Getting Technical with Mashable Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Say More Versus In My Bag Mashable @Home All Series OpenAI says GPT-5.6-Sol helped find the PHP flaws now shaking the internet The company also says the way the industry handles these discoveries needs to change. Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and . OpenAI says its AI models helped uncover the critical PHP security flaws that have websites across the internet scrambling.

One of the two major issues impacting web security this morning has had a ripple effect. In the wake of an announcement from the PHP Foundation that it was issuing a security release to patch two critical vulnerabilities, several government websites in the EU and Canada were taken offline as a preventive measure. Reuters reported that governments in the Netherlands, Denmark, France and Finland took down at least some websites as a preventive measure. Meanwhile Evan Solomon, Canada's Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, posted on X about the decision to temporarily go offline, while seconding the call for any website operators using PHP to update as soon as possible. PHP is a programming language for websites.

It's the most startling cybersecurity vulnerability found by AI yet. It won't be the last. Some sites were affected by similar outages today when they were taken offline after a critical cybersecurity vulnerability was announced. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Newly announced vulnerabilities could affect broad swathes of the internet after being discovered by teams of cybersecurity professionals--with heavy AI assistance.

Trending Now Mashable Selects Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Getting Technical with Mashable Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Say More Versus In My Bag Mashable @Home Top creators, ranked Creator Playbook All Series Two serious flaws in software that powers a large share of the web leaked ahead of their fix. Now attacks have reportedly started. Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and .

PCWorld reports that Google Chrome 156 introduces a new Media understanding feature, allowing users to ask Gemini AI to summarize or explain videos and audio content directly in the browser.

The company is suspending the feature after security researchers discovered how easy it was to access sensitive information shared with the AI assistant. In the month since its release, Meta's AI assistant has had several major security issues. Muse, the new general-purpose AI agent from Meta, can expose sensitive information when users share conversations through web links, researchers reported Monday. In response to questions from Ars about the behavior, Meta said it's suspending the sharing feature while the company reviews it and considers making changes. Like many online services, Muse has allowed users to share searches, conversations, images, and similar content with other people.

The Dell Laptop Buying Guide UK: Which Dell Laptop Should You Buy? When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. I built an AI agent to protect my data. My vibe-coded AI assistant had strict rules about what it could and couldn't do, but a loophole left it -- and my data -- wide open to attack. I thought I was so clever.

The Dell Laptop Buying Guide UK: Which Dell Laptop Should You Buy? When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Hackers are hijacking Plex servers to mine crypto. A chain of four Plex vulnerabilities lets attackers run malicious code on unpatched Plex servers without logging in. Security researchers have discovered that hackers are actively exploiting four vulnerabilities in Plex Media Server, the popular app that's used to stream films, TV shows, music, and other digital content from your own PC, server, or NAS device.

PCWorld reports that Mozilla has released Firefox 158, introducing an AI-powered Smart Windows feature for automatic form filling and adding support for the efficient JPEG XL image format. The update patches 77 security flaws, including 30 high-risk vulnerabilities, with 24 capable of allowing malicious code execution and eight potentially enabling attackers to escape the browser sandbox. Users are advised to update Firefox immediately to close these dangerous security gaps. Firefox 158 is out for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. This version brings improved PDF support, the ability to fill forms with the help of "AI," as well as fixes for over 75 security vulnerabilities. Updates are also available for Firefox ESR versions. Firefox 159's release is scheduled for October 27th, 2026.

PCWorld reports that Microsoft set a record by fixing 1,416 security vulnerabilities in its October 2026 Patch Tuesday update, surpassing any previous single-month total. The update addresses 85 critical flaws, including 67 remote code execution vulnerabilities, a dangerous SharePoint elevation of privilege issue, and one actively exploited Windows Shell flaw. Windows and Office users are urged to apply these updates immediately to avoid serious cyberattacks and unauthorized system access. Yesterday was October Patch Tuesday, and Microsoft's security updates addressed 1,416 new vulnerabilities. Not only is that another record broken, but it's also the first time over 1,000 flaws were fixed in a single month.