Artificial intelligence recently uncovered a vulnerability that has existed for 22 years.  Researchers have always known that PHP, a programming language for web development that powers over 70% of the world’s websites, had weaknesses that could potentially be exploited. 

The problem was that when the PHP system ran out of memory while processing a request, it could leave behind old information, such as passwords and personal data. Threat actors, who are people or other entitys with the ability to exploit a threat within cyber security, could potentially access. 

Although this security risk was known for over two decades, it was not an imminent threat. Neither researchers nor threat actors knew how to use this flaw to their advantage due to the complicated coding and the effect it may have on existing websites. 

It wasn’t until recently that cybersecurity researchers at Wiz Research used AI technology to discover how this flaw in the PHP system could be exploited as well as how to create a patch that could be installed to protect their systems from this specific cybersecurity threat. 

This discovery was scheduled to be released to the public last Wednesday, Oct. 21. 

However, before researchers could share the specific flaw in the PHP system and provide a patch or software that could counter this flaw, two remote code execution vulnerabilities were leaked, allowing threat actors to gain full control of affected systems. 

Paul Housholder, the director of ITS technical and business services, said, “Ideally the patches would have been released along with the description of the vulnerability at the same time and everybody could take some time to assess them and figure out the risk and put the patches in place.”

 “What happened Wednesday afternoon is that the Center for Internet Security Administration,   the National Security Agency and Cloudflare started seeing attacks using that vulnerability about the same time that the patches were released,” Housholder said.

With this recent discovery, concerns about national cybersecurity threats increased, with the federal government recommending the immediate shutdown of many services across the world until a counter solution could be implemented. 

Many government services, as well as Goshen College websites such as Moodle, GCOnline and MyGC, were included in this temporary shutdown.  

“We were able to utilize AI to speed up our response,” Housholder said of the influence of AI on technology systems like the PHP. 

“AI has sped up the process of finding vulnerabilities. It has assisted with the process of creating patches for those vulnerabilities,” Housholder said. “Al also assists threat actors with the development of tools that take advantage of the vulnerabilities. AI can assist all these functions at a faster speed than we ever could have imagined before.”

Alex Dugger, the content production manager for More Than Just Stories, mirrored Housholder’s feelings. Dugger said, “AI has made everything in the industry move faster for better and worse.”

Something that Dugger noted was that the patch that was released last Wednesday only applied to the newest PHP versions 7.4 through 8.5 although this vulnerability has existed since PHP version 5.4.   

“There are softwares out in the wild that have never been updated to PHP 8 that are using unsupported versions and there is no fix,” Dugger said. “That is still a major concern.” 

With many other vulnerabilities turning up, the data systems team has been actively working to restore all services to the previous state along with multiple new protection updates.

The most recent update from Housholder was that the data systems team was able to find a solution that secures the PHP on the GC apps. 

As a result, GC custom-built services are now back to being accessible on and of campus.