Cloudflare detected millions of exploitation attempts targeting a critical vulnerability in the widely used PHP programming language, CEO Matthew Prince announced. The attacks escalated rapidly after public disclosure: thousands of attempts were observed in the 10 hours prior to disclosure, rising to tens of thousands within 45 minutes, hundreds of thousands within two hours, and ultimately reaching millions. Website operators worldwide implemented emergency protective measures following the Wednesday disclosure, resulting in some government websites in Europe and other regions going offline as administrators scrambled to patch systems against active exploitation.