Why AI could threaten much of the world’s digital infrastructure

Earlier this month, authorities worldwide urged website administrators to execute emergency updates after a nonprofit programming foundation flagged critical security flaws that could allow hackers to breach systems.Government and corporate websites briefly went offline to patch the vulnerabilities, nicknamed PHP2Shell, which were discovered by independent cybersecurity experts using artificial intelligence (AI).Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3What’s the PHP coding flaw that could pull down 70 percent of the internet?list 2 of 3World leaders warn of security flaws found in PHP programming languagelist 3 of 3OpenAI says its agents turned off own safeguardsend of listThe vulnerabilities were embedded in the code of a widely used open-source web programming language, PHP, for more than a decade. They had gone unnoticed, however, because it would have been too complicated for humans to exploit them without the use of advanced AI.But cybersecurity experts, as well as those maintaining important software, say PHP2Shell could be the first in a deluge of security flaws exposed by emerging AI. They say much of the world’s most critical digital infrastructure is maintained by v...