Last month, vulnerabilities dubbed PHP2Shell were uncovered in the open-source PHP language used by most computer programmers that design and run websites around the world. As a result, many governments alerted website administrators to undertake emergency updates in order to fix those vulnerabilities. This batch of vulnerabilities illustrates the magnitude of the threat posed to digital infrastructure by increasingly powerful AI models.
While many website administrators raced to fix those weaknesses identified by AI, experts are concerned that this is just the beginning and more vulnerabilities are likely to be uncovered as more cybersecurity teams probe existing systems to find weaknesses that had previously been missed.
The bigger concern is that hackers armed with powerful AI tools could uncover vulnerabilities in digital infrastructure and exploit them long before cybersecurity personnel have had the chance to flag those weaknesses to the relevant authorities.
To compound matters, the foundations responsible for ensuring that the core of the digital infrastructure the world depends on functions safely have limited resources and are generally understaffed. For example, the PHP Foundation has about $7m annually to run safety checks and identify weaknesses that could be leveraged by hackers.
Those meager financial resources make their task difficult because running the AI models to check for weaknesses costs lots of money for the tokens needed to use the AI models. AI companies have been helpful by donating tokens worth millions, but this isn’t enough.
Experts say a lot more AI labs need to commit money and personnel to this cause of searching for vulnerabilities so that digital infrastructure can be proactively updated as soon as weaknesses are found. These resources availed by tech companies shouldn’t be viewed as charitable contributions because many of those companies have services and products that depend on open-source digital infrastructure to function.
For example, Facebook, owned by Meta, was designed using PHP. The users of this social media platform, billions of them, are therefore at risk if the PHP language has flaws that could allow hackers to use Facebook to conduct illicit activities. It is therefore in the best interests of these leading tech conglomerates to not only fund but also avail the technical expertise required to stay ahead of hackers.
With the growing pace at which major vulnerabilities are being uncovered, the warnings about the threats posed by AI can no longer be brushed off as alarmist. Large tech corporations like Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) need to do more to ensure that the digital infrastructure the world depends on remains safe from attack by hackers leveraging advanced AI tools.
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