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In an anonymous post on an internet forum, we got the first warning about what some are calling one of the most serious families of software vulnerabilities ever discovered. AIs helped find them. Here’s what happened, why, and how it fits into the bigger picture. Thread 🧵

On Wednesday we learned the full seriousness of the problem: these bugs put any server running PHP at risk of being hacked. That’s huge swathes of the internet. For example, an estimated 40% of websites use WordPress, due to its ease of use, and it relies on PHP.

With the announcement and the patch released, there has been a scramble all over the world to secure vulnerable computer systems, taking them down for hours or longer in the process, to prevent hackers from gaining access.

Already government websites, including those of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Czechia, Canada, Australia, and Japan, have had to be taken down as a preventative measure while their systems are patched.