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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 🧵

Hours later, the PHP Foundation announced that two critical vulnerabilities had been discovered in PHP, a programming language used in an estimated 70% of websites worldwide. It said an emergency security upgrade wouldn’t be available until the next day.

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.

To those paying close attention, this won’t be any surprise: AIs, including OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol and Google’s Gemini 4 Argon, were used to help find these vulnerabilities.