PHP2Shell: Inside the AI-Assisted Exploit Race
Show notes
In this episode of ShadowTalk, John Dilgen and Alexandra Moore break down PHP2Shell, two critical vulnerabilities in PHP that sent the security community scrambling. With PHP powering roughly 70% of the web, the blast radius is unlike most vulnerability disclosures.
The discussion pulls directly from ReliaQuest's own lab research:
- How AI tools compressed exploit development to under an hour
- Why the initial attack sequence looks more like an application crash than a compromise
- Why a single PHP error message could be a defender's most important clue
Learn what organizations need to do now, from closing dangerous logging gaps to hunting retroactively for signs of compromise that may have already happened.
Resources: https://linktr.ee/ReliaQuestShadowTalk
John Dilgen: Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at ReliaQuest, where he specializes in researching cyber threats impacting ReliaQuest customers. With a strong technical background, he previously served as an Incident Response Analyst and Trainer at ReliaQuest.
Alexandra Moore: Manager of Threat Intelligence at ReliaQuest, where she leads intelligence analysis and customer dissemination to help organizations understand and respond to emerging cyber threats. Prior to this, she established and scaled monitoring across Russian-language cybercriminal platforms at Digital Shadows, building collection and analytical coverage to support digital risk protection capabilities.