PHP2Shell: Critical PHP Flaws CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 Found Using AI

Two critical vulnerabilities, dubbed PHP2Shell and tracked as CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, were disclosed in the core PHP runtime, each rated 9.2 under CVSS v4.0. The flaws affect PHP releases from 5.4 through 8.5 and sit in memory management and error handling code that nearly every request uses. An out-of-memory issue behind them was first noticed in 2024 during a security audit, but a patch stalled for about two years because no working exploit had been shown and fixes risked breaking compatibility. Researchers at Calif and cloud security firm Wiz used AI models from OpenAI and Google to find and weaponize the bugs, with Calif producing a pre-authentication remote code execution chain. Several government portals, Wikimedia systems and other public services temporarily went offline as a precaution while patches were prepared.
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