Dead internet theory could soon become a reality in the literal sense. Two critical vulnerabilities in PHP, the programming language powering an estimated 70% of websites, have triggered an emergency security response. OpenAI says its GPT-5.6 Sol model helped uncover one of the flaws, highlighting how advanced models can expose weaknesses across the internet before attackers exploit them.
Both vulnerabilities received severity scores of 9.2 out of 10. PHP released emergency patches on Wednesday, October 21, following weeks of coordinated work among researchers and software maintainers. The immediate concern is whether website administrators can secure vulnerable servers before hackers turn the newly disclosed flaws into widespread attacks.
How OpenAI found the flaws
OpenAI detailed the discovery in a Wednesday blog post about its Patch the Planet initiative. The effort brought together software maintainers, security researchers and infrastructure providers to prepare fixes before public disclosure.
A self-described hacker team called Calif used GPT-5.6 Sol to identify one of the vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity firm Wiz independently discovered and reported both flaws, according to OpenAI.
PHP’s development team led the patching effort, with OpenAI, Wiz and Cloudflare contributing research and technical support. The vulnerabilities required extensive coordination because their impact could extend across countless independently operated websites and servers.
OpenAI said frontier models identified the flaws before attackers did, giving defenders time to prepare. That window matters because publishing technical details can help other researchers understand a vulnerability, but it can also give hackers a starting point.
Hackers could seize server control
The vulnerabilities can enable remote code execution, allowing an attacker to run malicious commands on an affected server. Depending on the server’s configuration and permissions, a successful attack could expose sensitive information or compromise the system.
PHP’s official security advisory urges users to update immediately. The release includes fixes for supported branches, with emergency updates also available for certain older versions. Administrators should check PHP’s official guidance to identify the correct package for their installations.
Security experts are already concerned about attempts to weaponize the flaws. WatchTowr reproduced one of the exploits, while its head of threat intelligence, Jake Knott, warned that attacks could escalate quickly.
“As expected, watchTowr Intel is already observing in-the-wild exploitation of the latest PHP vulnerabilities,” Knott said in an email Wednesday morning, as reported by CNET. He added that nobody had succeeded at that point, but warned, “we don’t expect that will last long.”
Cloudflare Chief Technology Officer Dane Knecht said Wednesday that the company had deployed a fix to its firewall. The US National Security Agency also urged organizations to prepare for immediate updates. It advised taking affected systems offline if administrators could not patch them promptly.
Finding bugs is only half
OpenAI’s disclosure points to a growing tension in cybersecurity. More capable models can help researchers uncover deeply embedded flaws, but attackers may also use similar tools to develop exploits faster.
If you are wondering whether your website is affected, we have packaged a Codex skill to help check.
The company acknowledged that risk directly, warning that the same capabilities can help malicious actors build offensive tools. It expects discoveries of similarly consequential vulnerabilities to increase sharply in the coming months.
Finding a flaw, however, does not automatically secure the internet. Software maintainers must develop reliable patches, hosting providers need to deploy protections, and website operators must update systems they control. Older installations can complicate that process, particularly when administrators cannot upgrade immediately.
The PHP incident also shows why coordinated disclosure matters. Researchers spent weeks working with maintainers and security providers before releasing details that could help defenders and attackers alike.
That preparation has now given website operators a path to remediation. The remaining uncertainty is how quickly they can act before attackers turn public knowledge of the flaws into widespread compromises.
Apple just revealed a new brand identity for Apple Music, with the expected turn to Liquid Glass. I’m not much of a fan of their new design language in general; this is where I admit that I’m still running MacOS Sequoia and have grumpy things to say about rounded corner radii and text legibility.
It’s just a trend, it will pass, and at some point I’ll probably cave and upgrade when it starts actually affecting my ability to get work done, or more importantly get security updates. Once I adjust, I’ll stop noticing it, and life will go on.
As such, I wouldn’t normally find an obvious rebrand like this notable, much less feel like I had much to say about it. But then I happened to catch Apple’s behind-the-scenes video in my YouTube recommendations, and I realized I did have thoughts.
With You Can See Everything, Holmes joins other such high-profile subjects as Lance Armstrong, Imelda Marcos and Anthony Weiner to allow film-makers to document their lives. But do they ever come out well?
In You Can See Everything, convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes invites film-makers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim into her home in a supposed act of “radical transparency”. Holmes is filmed, along with her partner, Billy Evans, and their two young children, in the weeks before starting a prison sentence for defrauding Theranos investors. “The best way for people to see who she is,” Evans says, “is to give as much access as possible into our daily lives”. It may also be the best way to market “Theranos 2.0”, which the couple are working on during filming. But the documentary questions whether Holmes is presenting her authentic self or a manufactured persona. Fielder speaks for the audience when he asks Holmes in a tense exchange whether she’s “being real” with him. “I’m always being real,” she says.
That question of authenticity is at the heart of documentary film-making. You Can See Everything is as much about the ambiguous relationship between film-maker and subject as it is about Holmes herself. There is often a power struggle over narrative control in documentaries, with both sides of the dynamic wanting different outcomes from the final film. Watching You Can See Everything inevitably prompts the question: why would Holmes, days before she heads to jail, invite the scrutiny of a film crew?
After months of controversy over the possible use of AI by winners of prestigious awards, the Prix Pascal de Littérature IA is rewarding fiction written with the help of LLMs
A prize for AI-written books has launched this week.
The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA invites submissions of manuscripts co-written with AI tools, with the winner promised publication.
In these strange, subdued weeks before the much-anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI, there have still been some welcome surprises. Onimusha: Way of the Sword revived a half-forgotten samurai action series with much aplomb, while Silent Hill: Townfall transported all of the franchise’s bloody, dread-filled psychological horror to … the picturesque Scottish coast. Even more shocking to games writers, though, is the fact that the forthcoming Modern Warfare 4 has one of the best Call of Duty campaign modes for at least six years – and might even be up there with the original Modern Warfare trilogy.
The setting is an invasion of South Korea by its northern neighbour – a setup that could have fuelled a hundred instantly forgettable Netflix films, but has proved controversial in a video game. The authoritarian regime has a new (fictitious) ruler and a powerful experimental weapon, which it’s not afraid to use as the opening gambit in an explosive attack. You take on the role of Park Hyun Jun, a conscripted South Korean soldier who, along with his small unit of similarly inexperienced grunts, gets caught in the firestorm as cities burn and enemy paratroopers fill the skies.
Un phénomène climatique qui se déroule à l’autre bout du monde peut bouleverser la météo de la planète entière, fragiliser les récoltes et coûter des milliers de milliards de dollars à l’économie mondiale. C’est tout l’enjeu du super El Niño 2026-2027 « Godzilla », dont les conséquences...
Carrie White, the telekinetic prom queen from hell, is one of the most beloved horror icons in popular culture. First introduced in Stephen King's 1974 novel, Carrie, the character was immortalized in director Brian De Palma's 1976 adaptation, widely regarded as one of the best horror films of all time. It's certainly one of the best King adaptations. So Mike Flanagan faced a massive challenge when he signed on to create an eight-episode miniseries for Prime Video based on the book, released just in time to mark the 50th anniversary of de Palma's film.
I was among the skeptics who questioned why a Carrie miniseries was even necessary, although as a diehard Flanagan fan ("Flana-fan"?), I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. If anyone has an affinity for smartly adapting horror in general, and King's work in particular, it's Flanagan. And you know what? With one (very big) exception, Flanagan pulls it off, giving us a richly textured version of the story that is as much about kindness and lost innocence as bloody, vengeful rage—although we get plenty of the latter, too.
(Many spoilers below for the novel and the 1976 film, but there are no major reveals for the new series until after the second gallery. We'll give you a heads-up when we get there.)
Ultra Right Beer, a brand launched in 2023 by MAGA political consultant Seth Weathers, has vanished from the internet with many deliveries unfulfilled.
I’d wager everyone has a rehearsed response to what’s absolutely one of the world’s worst interview questions: “What’s your biggest weakness?” Whenever I’ve gotten it, I take a slow—even pensive—breath and rattle off my line: “I say no to myself too much.”
I won’t lie. It’s a bit shameless—a definite humblebrag. I’m a systems thinker: When an idea pops up, I immediately spin up a feasibility assessment in my head. I run lists, plot timelines, and tally budget line items. Sometimes a rough Gantt chart starts to take shape. (I’m a gas at parties, as you can surely tell.)
My brain, throughout my 20-plus-year career as a science and tech journalist, has played host to a near constant tug-of-war between ambition and reality. Learning to find that balance is a big part of what’s helped me survive in this industry and, ultimately, led me here. This past spring, I had the great privilege of joining the incredible team of journalists behind MIT Technology Review to take the reins of the print magazine.
If you’ve been reading along with us for the last handful of issues, you may have noticed a few changes starting to materialize. We’ve brought back a regular roster of lists and infographics (both things that magazines do particularly well). But the biggest change is only just beginning to take shape, which is why Mat Honan, our editor in chief, asked me to hop in to introduce myself—and the issue you’re holding in your hands right now.
We’re giving ourselves permission to play around and experiment. To be a little … audacious.
Because, practical though I may be, I do still have plenty of ideas. It’s just that I sometimes need a reminder to stop blocking myself and do the thing. That’s the spirit driving this issue in particular.
We wanted to end 2026 with a slate of stories that check in on impossible ideas. Why? Because it’s frankly a lot of fun to dream about living on the moon or uploading our brains. Because losing sight of ambition is all too easy when it feels as if we’re playing whack-a-mole with the world’s problems. But also because the scientists and engineers who absolutely refuse to give up on even the most daring endeavors—like making synthetic blood or decoding animals’ speech—remind us what this whole technology thing is supposed to do to begin with.
It’s supposed to take cutting-edge research and development and apply it to make life better, safer, healthier, even more joyful. And when we eff up and make things worse (see: forever chemicals, traffic deaths, and AI that encourages potentially dangerous user behavior), we’re supposed to dig back in, assess the damage, and find ways to fix what we’ve broken. Even when unraveling the mess might itself seem impossible.
Right before I came to MIT Technology Review, I edited a newsletter about individual actions that can help address the climate crisis, which some would call—and have called—a fool’s errand, given the sheer scale of the problem. They might say it’s as implausible as an AI kill switch, practical nuclear fusion, or a superconductor that works at room temperature. But if I learned nothing else from three years spent finding ways for li’l old me (or li’l old you!) to chip away at one of humanity’s biggest existential threats, it’s that focusing on what we can’t do only makes the darkness darker.
So yeah, this one’s for the folks who have the audacity to try, and who refuse to let anyone—themselves included—tell them no.
Humans are far from the only species with a gift for gab, and our furry, feathered, and finned friends could have a lot to tell us. Decoding how animals communicate with one another could offer a window into the inner lives of other species and help humans realize that “animals are sentient creatures who think, who have hopes and dreams of their own,” says Con Slobodchikoff, the founder of Zoolingua, a company working on dog-to-human speech.
The sticking points
Teasing all this out is complex. To decipher howls, squeaks, and clicks, researchers must match the creatures making sounds with what’s happening around them. Prairie dogs, for example, utter a different series of yips when a coyote approaches than when a hawk is nearby. It’s painstaking work, especially for difficult-to-observe species, like deep-diving whales or subterranean mole rats.
There are other hurdles. Many animals communicate not just through sound but through visual cues, touch, pheromones, or a combination of signals, some of which might be difficult for us to perceive. And without a multispecies Rosetta stone, it’s hard to know if translations are accurate.
The progress
Over the past 50 years, a growing arsenal of devices has made it easier to observe the sophisticated ways animals communicate. Hydrophones at the bottom of the ocean can capture humpback whale song, and tiny wearable “biologgers” can record a bat’s every squeak.
In the last decade, advances in AI have leveled up our ability to make sense of it all. The technology can detect different calls, distinguish which sounds belong to which animal, and spot patterns. Researchers at the Earth Species Project (ESP), a nonprofit founded in 2018 to decode animal communication, recently used machine learning to detect vocalizations of carrion crows and determine which bird made which call.
They suspect that more advanced AI could translate critters’ chatter. Large language models like Claude and ChatGPT excel at finding relationships between words, explains Sara Keen, one of ESP’s behavioral ecologists. ESP hopes its own NatureLM—trained on human speech, music, and animal sounds—will be able to interpret the vocalizations of a variety of species.
That promise, however, is still theoretical. Yossi Yovel, a neuroecologist at Tel Aviv University, worries that these models will put too much emphasis on acoustic similarities and make mistakes—like lumping together similar sounds that have different meanings.
As for a two-way convo? It’s not clear when—or whether—that will happen. Still, “a lot of animals have an evolutionary structure that is similar enough that we should be able to understand what they’re saying,” Slobodchikoff says.
Progress meter ………… 4
Researchers have amassed heaps of data on animal communication, but they’re still trying to figure out how to decipher it all.
Every year, traffic crashes kill more than one million people, and they’re the leading cause of death for children and young adults. In the US, 100 people a day lose their lives this way, in many cases not on highways but on rural and local streets. “Traffic deaths are a leading cause of preventable death, yet we treat it like it’s inevitable,” says Leah Shahum, founder and director of the Vision Zero Network, a nonprofit focused on making streets less deadly.
The sticking points
The causes of a crash can be muddy. Drivers make mistakes like speeding or getting distracted, but infrastructure fails them too: Perhaps they were on a road built for speed and not safety, in a screen-filled vehicle, or at an intersection where pedestrians, cyclists, and other cars aren’t visible.
Cheap and proven traffic-calming opportunities abound—from using planters to tighten intersections to lowering speed limits—but government logjams and red tape can be speed bumps. “There’s so many moving parts,” says Laura Sandt of the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. “On the flip side, it shows that we have so many opportunities for injury prevention.”
The progress
The total number of traffic deaths has increased over the last century. And though the US rate has dipped from a peak of 30.8 deaths per 100,000 people in the 1930s, the past decade has seen a concerning jump in deadly pedestrian incidents. At the same time, communities are waking up to the essential role of traffic safety policy, Shahum says.
One success story is Hoboken, New Jersey, which hasn’t had a traffic fatality since 2017. This is due to a combination of efforts like boosting investment in public transit, promoting walkability by extending curbs, and using cameras to identify crash-prone intersections in need of a redesign. But even there, obstacles remain. If an intersection hasn’t been proved to be deadly, for example, it can be an uphill battle to argue for removing parking spaces to widen curbs. “You’re kind of selling insurance through these improvements, and that’s not always easy,” says Greg Francese, the city’s acting director of transportation and parking.
There’s also no silver bullet that will work everywhere. Situated directly across the river from New York City, Hoboken is a highly transit-oriented city of less than 60,000 people. Success there might not translate to traffic-death hot spots like Memphis or Dallas. But it’s not impossible. Take Edmonton, Alberta, a sprawling, car-centric Canadian city of around one million people: Between 2015 and 2020, it cut traffic fatalities by 63% and serious injuries by 40% by adjusting speed limits and improving signals at crosswalks.
Progress meter ………… 6
We know how to tweak intersections and adjust traffic signals. Getting the funding and will to roll out those changes is the big red light.
Mary Anne Franks has spent years fighting against online abuse. When people are abused with impunity, she says, the message becomes “We do not care about women’s voices.”
Login
