Organisations around the world scrambled on Thursday to fix critical flaws in PHP, the software that powers much of the web. The vulnerabilities could allow attackers to take control of affected servers. Some websites were taken offline as a precaution while fixes were installed.
The paradox is that while AI helped researchers uncover the flaw, it also threatens to accelerate the ability to exploit it. Amazon said that it had detected an attempt before the public disclosure of the PHP flaws. What the episode highlights is AI’s central role in security – and not always for the right reasons.
OpenAI’s models have also been responsible for two alarming hacks this year – a security breach of an Australian health department website and a raid by a swarm of AI bots on Hugging Face, an AI services platform. Citing those incidents, the AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, warned that a similar cyber-attack on the UK is “likely, if not inevitable”. Britain is not uniquely vulnerable.
In some respects it is more advanced than many countries in grasping the scale of the challenge. The London-based AI Security Institute is internationally recognised as an authority in a rapidly evolving field. A cybersecurity bill to protect critical digital infrastructure is going through parliament.
As Mr Narayan concedes, national governments face limits in protecting their citizens from a global threat. Having Donald Trump in the White House makes the international challenge harder. The US president has rejected calls for international negotiations on AI regulation.
He is even dismissive when the bosses of US technology companies recognise the need for external monitoring and ask for statutory guardrails on their own activities. Mr Trump takes the view that America’s lead at the most advanced frontier of AI is a national strategic asset that would be compromised if other nations, and China in particular, were allowed to set the pace of advancement. In the president’s eyes it is a race for global supremacy and only losers urge caution.
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