Will AI expose the rickety infrastructure of the internet?
Summary
- Recently discovered vulnerabilities in the open-source programming language PHP forced website owners to immediately patch their sites or take them down.
- Human researchers participating in an OpenAI and Wiz initiative found the vulnerabilities, using AI to help exploit the bug.
- Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince reported millions of attempted hacks related to the PHP vulnerability following public disclosure.
- The incident highlights ongoing concerns that large language models and AI agents will make discovering and exploiting foundational internet vulnerabilities much easier.
Why it matters
As AI tools make finding and exploiting decades-old open source vulnerabilities easier, foundational internet infrastructure faces a heightened security reckoning.