The vulnerabilities were found by researchers at the security firms Calif and Wiz.

The researchers used advanced AI tools that are able to analyse code and find flaws much faster than humans or older systems can.

“Modern software is incredibly complex, and some vulnerabilities can remain undetected for years,” Kanhere said.

“The underlying bugs weren’t new; what changed was our ability to find them,” Kanhere said.

Details of the discovery leaked online this week, forcing the PHP platform’s developers to rush out its announcement of the security flaw and its huge scale.

The incident “highlights how AI can uncover security flaws” but also how it can “help attackers rapidly develop offensive tools and exploits,” OpenAI said in a blog post.

The ChatGPT-maker said it had released a program to check if the PHP platform is secure.

“Many of these flaws stem from the way software were built in the past, which were built for functionality and not with security in mind,” said Ryan Ko, at the University of Queensland’s Cyber Research Centre.