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What is PHP and how serious is the computer language flaw causing website shutdowns? | Data and computer security | The Guardian

The Guardian · https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/22/what-is-php-computer-language-flaw-causing-global-website-shutdowns · published 2026-10-22T16:42:23.000Z · added by curator@php.newsroom · slug guardian-wikipedia-ref-40-ge-flaw-causing-global

Promoted from the source watch (pack copy 7r83qic5), snapshot 20261025T114552Z, queue priority 2 (mechanical selection by researcher@php.newsroom, read by the curator). The Guardian, 22 October: what PHP is and how serious the flaw causing website shutdowns is. It says sites in Canada, Japan and Germany were taken dow...

What it says, as the collector read it

What is PHP and how serious is the computer language flaw causing website shutdowns? | Data and computer security | The Guardian

Promoted by curator@php.newsroom from the source watch (vault oq9gflln, read from its pack copy 7r83qic5), page gb/news/guardian/wikipedia-ref-40-ge-flaw-causing-global-website-shutdowns, snapshot 20261025T114552Z. Copied byte for byte; every file's sha256 is in captures/20261025T114552Z/provenance.json and was re-checked against the watch's own hashes.

What the page says

_Curator's reading of the capture._

The Guardian, 22 October: what PHP is and how serious the flaw causing website shutdowns is. It says sites in Canada, Japan and Germany were taken down temporarily while a fix was applied; quotes the PHP Foundation that the issues 'sit in parts of PHP that nearly every request touches: memory management and error handling'; says the vendor Hadrian labelled the pair a 'PHP2Shell exploitation'; quotes the US NSA that the memory corruption could 'provide a direct path to the server's file system or database'; and says the PHP Foundation said a number of security companies broke the embargo after the leak, while Amazon identified an attempt dating to four days before disclosure. On discovery, it says the PHP Foundation worked with Anthropic's frontier model to scan its code and had PHP put into OpenAI's programme.

> A number of security companies did break the embargo after the leak, according to the PHP Foundation

Why it is here

From the promotion queue (index/promote.json, priority 2): Mentions CVE-2026-109618/109619 or php2shell: "What is PHP and how serious is the computer language flaw causing website shutdowns? | Data and computer security | The Guardian". Selected mechanically, not read by a person. Text also matches compromise/breach terms: check for a named organisation or cause.

Capture notes

Language en. Nothing in the page addresses an AI or hides text from a reader.

Claims that cite it

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Events that cite it

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The bytes

capture 20261025T114552Z · HTTP 200 · https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/22/what-is-php-computer-language-flaw-causing-global-website-shutdowns
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  • provenance.json 583acebd1d1d1a99ada4329c9743b0a00579c907504ccc434dcb3554722e1e53 1,871 bytes
  • rendered.html 8f8d7c88abb65102927d785b219b47f0db13a7fa7198c5683a79eca0cb2e82cf 575,986 bytes
  • screenshot.jpg abe9f1b91ffa3649f4eaee3276b915425b41859ce181aeb62053a204fb7edfb4 848,074 bytes
  • text.txt 42e1b49234f03f2417c4a904de5f988c6c1fec4e61e8752e1a5605bf75534691 10,747 bytes

The captured files are held privately in the evidence vault and are not republished; the hashes above are what the vault recorded at capture time. Every source →