Unsurprisingly, hackers have quickly pounced on a major flaw in PHP, a scripting language used across the web, probing vulnerable sites and even trying to exploit them. Amazon also uncovered signs that someone tried to abuse the flaw four days earlier on Saturday before the threat was publicly known. A growing number of cybersecurity providers and researchers have spotted the suspicious activity as the IT industry scrambles to patch two high-severity vulnerabilities in PHP, which an estimated 70% of websites use. This morning, the PHP Foundation released patches, but there’s fear that hackers will use AI models to quickly exploit sites that have yet to install the fix. One cybersecurity vendor, VulnCheck, has set up “honeypots,” or fake vulnerable systems on the internet, to track if hackers are targeting the PHP flaws. On Wednesday, two IP addresses from Canada and the Netherlands, which have been flagged as malicious, were frequently connecting to the honeypots, apparently to probe for vulnerabilities.
VulnCheck also observed “at least one attempted exploit” coming from an IP address based in China. The attempt abused the first PHP flaw, CVE-2026-109618, which can allow an attacker to execute rogue computer code without authentication. However, VulnCheck reports the exploit attempt failed, since “it tried to read the file back through a file disclosure path, but the path did not exist, so the attempt received a 404.”In another disturbing find, Amazon said it discovered an earlier exploitation attempt dating to Oct. 17, 2026 in the company’s Madpot honeypot security tool.Amazon said: “The exploit attempt originated from an IP address associated with a commercial anonymization network,” or what appears to be a VPN. “While the vulnerability was under embargo, the targeting of a honeypot from an anonymized IP address suggests the activity was conducted by a threat actor, though it remains unclear how the actor acquired exploit information prior to disclosure,” the company added. Hence, “compromise may predate the advisory,” Amazon says.Internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare also noted hackers started trying to exploit the flaw a day before, as news leaked that two major flaws had been found in PHP. In response, the company imposed web application firewalls to block the exploitation attempts. “Cloudflare successfully deployed multiple mitigations for all its customers while the vulnerability was leaked before the official release date, and we observed attack traffic targeting our customers,” the company said. “We observed how attackers were mutating the attack payload to try to bypass our protections by tracking the volume of matches and cross-referencing with the rule logic.”
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Another security provider, Patchstack, also reports: “Shortly after PHP’s update, our telemetry shows only probing attacks, with no hard evidence of breaches yet. This is expected to change as details of the security update go public. Updating is absolutely necessary.”The flaws are high severity because they can allow a hacker to run malicious code and steal data, including passwords, from web servers that run PHP. The IT industry created a dedicated site, php2shell.com, with guidance on how to plug the vulnerability. But as a precaution, some sites have decided to take themselves temporarily offline to prevent exploitation as they install the patch. This includes Pinboard, a social bookmarking site, several government sites in the Netherlands, and some services related to Wikipedia.
(Credit: pinboard.in)
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to add that Amazon detected a hacker trying to exploit the flaw days earlier.
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service. I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I’m now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I’m always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.
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