Hackers struggle to exploit PHP flaws after cybersecurity crisis

One day after governments around the world warned that newly publicized software vulnerabilities were so severe that websites should consider going offline until they could fix them, experts and insiders said there are few, if any, reports of widespread damage. That could still change, of course, and cybersecurity experts warn that the threat will remain for weeks, if not longer. Still, there were early signs Thursday that hackers were finding it difficult to capitalize on the vulnerabilities. “Across all our telemetry, and we are looking hard, we have only seen a couple of real exploitation attempts,” said Don Smith, vice president of threat research at the British software security firm Sophos. Experts agree that that was in part because of a behind-the-scenes, global effort that identified the flaw and quietly designed a fix to address it.