AI-Powered Hacking Campaign 'Black October' Exploits Critical PHP Flaw Affecting 70% of the Web

Criminal actors are deploying AI-powered hacking tools to exploit critical vulnerabilities in PHP, the programming language running approximately 70% of the world's websites, triggering a global cybersecurity emergency in October 2026. Two severe flaws in PHP, collectively nicknamed PHP2Shell, have enabled attackers to gain unauthorized control of web servers without passwords, affecting every version of the language from 5.4 (released in 2012) onward with critical severity ratings of 9.2.