Cloudflare Sees Millions of PHP Exploit Attempts After Disclosure

Cloudflare recorded millions of attempts to exploit newly disclosed PHP vulnerabilities, a sharp rise from activity logged before the flaws became public.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said the company's network logged thousands of exploitation attempts during the 10 hours before public disclosure. The tally rose to tens of thousands within 45 minutes after disclosure and reached hundreds of thousands two hours later. It has since grown to millions, Prince said.

The spike followed Wednesday's disclosure of serious flaws in PHP, a widely used programming language. Website operators worldwide moved quickly to protect their systems after the disclosure. Some government websites in Europe and other regions went offline amid those emergency measures. The figures count attempts rather than confirmed successful intrusions.

Attempts were already being detected before the vulnerabilities became public, then rose sharply once details were disclosed. That rapid escalation underscores the security exposure a widely used software flaw can create for website operators.