# Dutch, Finnish and Wikimedia services go offline after unresolved PHP security flaws

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/prepare-for-more-website-shutdowns-in-the-age-of-ai-but-human-inaction-is-the-real-culprit-chris-stokel-walker/
- Published: 2026-10-22T13:46:26+00:00
- Updated: 2026-10-22T14:22:24+00:00
- Original publisher: The Guardian (publisher lean: Left)
- Original article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/22/website-shutdowns-ai-human-inaction-developers
- Topics: AI, Americas, Art, Business, Culture, Government, Markets, Politics, Software, Technology, World

## Key points

- PHP flaws prompted services to go offline.
- Attackers made millions of exploitation attempts.
- The author says chronic underfunding is the deeper problem.

## Summary

Government websites and other internet services in the Netherlands, Finland and Wikimedia systems have been taken offline to reduce the risk of attacks exploiting two serious flaws in PHP. The episode shows how widely used digital infrastructure can become fragile when security problems are left unresolved, while AI tools help attackers find and exploit weaknesses faster.

PHP is used by about 70% of websites that can be tracked. The PHP Foundation said developers identified the issue in 2024, but fixing it was judged too costly and difficult, a delay it described as a “structural failure” caused by inadequate resources. Cloudflare’s chief executive said the company had seen millions of exploitation attempts; researchers counted about 48,000 internet vulnerabilities in 2025 and more than 84,000 so far in 2026.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.