Research collected from outside sources and what this site derives from them; every fact links to a saved copy of its source Research or story?
Fact · scale · reported
PHP is used by almost 70% of websites
None of the three cites the survey it comes from. A share of websites using PHP is an upper bound on exposure, not a count of vulnerable systems.
Fact-check
A2 Reported●●○○○○ measures differently · Count · verdict: holds in part
Cloudflare, OpenAI and Wiz each state roughly 70%, but they restate one survey (Cloudflare links W3Techs; Tenable and Imperva name W3Techs), so this is an echo of one origin, and the survey's method is not captured, which caps a count at A2. The figure W3Techs publishes is a share of websites whose server-side language is known, a qualifier the claim drops.
| Capture checked | Result | What it says | sha256 of the text read |
|---|---|---|---|
| cloudflare-blog-php2shell-waf | carries | PHP is used by almost 70% of websites. | 302408765abf45e3 |
| cloudflare-blog-php2shell-waf | carries | PHP is used by almost <a href="https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php"><u>70% of websites</u></a>. | a0d3c37cde7c1721 |
| x-openai-php2shell | carries | an open-source programming language used to run an estimated 70% of websites. | 785b7cae55e3748b |
| wiz-blog-php2shell | carries | a popular general-purpose scripting language that powers 70% of all websites in the world. | e3568b6f88c93f6b |
| imperva-blog-php2shell | partial | With PHP used by over 69% of websites whose server-side programming language is known | 3da873bdb21219a6 |
| tenable-php2shell-faq | partial | According to W3Techs, PHP is used by 69.3% of websites whose server-side language is known. | 10d98694b9c0243e |
| rte-reuters-websites-go-dark (in the vault, not yet on this site) | partial | PHP runs roughly 75% of websites whose programming language can be identified, according to web technology tracker W3Techs | 99bb92662561bd29 |
| abc-au-gov-sites-exposed (in the vault, not yet on this site) | partial | PHP runs about 75 per cent of websites whose programming language can be identified, according to web technology tracker W3Techs. | 84937c7c5b87e7c9 |
Open tickets: Contradiction-1, Finding-103, Finding-32, Finding-33.
Graded in Run-1, resting on captures up to 2026-10-22 11:23 UTC. The scale is on the fact-check page.
This fact over time
- 2026-10-21Cloudflare publishes Cloudflare deploys protections against php2shell vulnerability
- 2026-10-21Wiz publishes PHP2Shell: AI uncovers critical RCE vulnerabilities affecting 70% of the Internet
- 2026-10-21 14:04 UTCOpenAI on X publishes OpenAI on X: OpenAI models helped researchers ... discover critical security flaws in PHP
- 2026-10-22 08:10 UTCSaved into the evidence vault: Wiz
- 2026-10-22 08:12 UTCSaved into the evidence vault: Cloudflare
- 2026-10-22 08:16 UTCSaved into the evidence vault: OpenAI on X
- 2026-10-22Enters this site as reported in v0.1.0 (reconstructed from git)
Published: when the source says it was published. Saved: the first capture into the evidence vault. The rest are this site: the release in which the fact first appeared and every release that changed its wording, sources or status.
What it rests on
Where this fact appears
In the briefings for:
And on every claim.
Every version of this fact
v1 · site v0.1.0 · 22 October 2026 · reported
PHP is used by almost 70% of websites
Who says it: Cloudflare; OpenAI ('an estimated 70%'); Wiz body text
Status: reported
Topic: scale
Sources: cloudflare-blog-php2shell-waf, x-openai-php2shell, wiz-blog-php2shell