Icelandic providers move quickly to patch severe PHP flaws

Icelandic web providers moved quickly to address two serious vulnerabilities in PHP, after hundreds of servers in the country were found to be exposed, mbl.is reported. No attacks linked to the flaws have been reported in Iceland, but attacks on websites abroad have been reported, said Ingólfur Andri Ágústsson, a specialist at Opnir kerfi.

Companies have blocked network traffic to affected web servers and updated their code libraries, Ágústsson said. PHP is used on servers that host more than 70 per cent of websites on the internet, he added.

The vulnerabilities were given a severity score of 9.2 out of 10 and were identified by an artificial intelligence scanning tool, Ágústsson said. CERT-IS, Iceland’s cyber security response team, issued a warning about them on Wednesday.

AI tools are increasingly being used to scan for vulnerabilities, but human review remains necessary to confirm that findings are accurate, he said.