Japan said on October 23 it will set up a team to simulate cyberattacks with AI to find weaknesses in technology systems after PHP flaws triggered hacking attempts and outages across online services.

In Japan, SoftBank said it was suspending its emergency mobile alert system for maintenance to address a PHP vulnerability. Nomura, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, ANA, JR East, and several government agencies also temporarily suspended some online services. JR East said some group services had resumed.

The bugs have been identified as CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, critical PHP vulnerabilities that can allow attackers to run arbitrary code on affected servers.

PHP developers released fixes on October 21, and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) urged immediate patching.

🔗 Source: Reuters