OpenAI coordinates disclosure of a critical PHP vulnerability found with AI assistance; the author warns that once the patch is public, attackers may quickly reverse-engineer it
OpenAI announced that its models helped researchers discover a critical vulnerability in the open-source programming language PHP as part of the Patch the Planet initiative, and that it led a coalition to complete coordinated disclosure; the patch has been released, and websites using PHP can upgrade to the new version. PHP is estimated to support about 70% of websites. OpenAI said the fix took two months and required major changes to the PHP engine, and called it one of the most impactful vulnerabilities in recent years and an instance of the Defender's Window, in which frontier AI finds vulnerabilities before attackers do, giving defenders time to prepare. In the author's post, the two vulnerabilities are called PHP2Shell, each with a CVSS score of 9.2; government websites in multiple European countries have proactively gone offline to avoid risk, and the post warns that once the patch is public, attackers can compare the old and new versions and use AI to quickly reverse-engineer the vulnerability. The OpenAI announcement is at https://openai.com/index/coordinated-disclosure-of-critical-vulnerabilities/
😭 赶紧下线吧！PHP 补丁已经发了，攻击者可能比网站管理员还高兴。
这次 PHP2Shell 两个漏洞，CVSS 都高达 9.2 分。欧洲多个国家的政府网站，已经主动下线避险。
补丁发布了，真正的危险窗口可能才刚刚开始。
补丁是公开的，旧代码也是公开的。
攻击者只需要对比新旧版本，再让 AI 分析修改了什么、为什么修改，就可能快速逆推出漏洞原理。
以前，这需要经验丰富的安全研究员花数年分析。
现在，AI 可能把整个过程大幅压缩。
最尴尬的事情来了：
防守方刚发布补丁，攻击方就可能拿着补丁研究怎么打还没升级的网站。
难怪欧洲部分政府网站宁可先关掉，也不敢继续裸奔。
OpenAI models helped researchers—operating as part of our Patch the Planet initiative—discover critical security flaws in PHP, an open-source programming language used to run an estimated 70% of websites.
Over the past two months, we led a coalition of maintainers, researchers, and security providers to prepare fixes and protections ahead of disclosure. This duration was necessary because the fix was quite intricate and required a major change to the PHP engine. Every site using PHP can now safely upgrade their version to stay secure, in addition to applying mitigations from various security vendors.
Due to the severity of these flaws and PHP’s widespread use, we consider this bug to be one of the most impactful vulnerabilities in recent memory. It also marks a new phase, where AI can find security bugs with internet-scale impact.
This is an example of the Defender’s Window in action: to our knowledge, frontier AI was able to find this vulnerability ahead of attackers, giving defenders time to prepare.
https://openai.com/index/coordinated-disclosure-of-critical-vulnerabilities/View the quoted post on X