php2shell: Millions of PHP services in Germany are vulnerable

No. 24 of 245 · heise online English · heise online · published 23 Oct 2026, 12:30 UTC · 2 min read

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3 judges. Scored by all three judges. Only the day’s top stories get the claim check. How far stories are checked

Censys scans show tens of millions of internet-facing PHP services still running versions vulnerable to the "php2shell" flaws (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, both rated critical), which allow remote code injection. Germany ranks second worldwide, with about 4.2 million potentially vulnerable services.

Read the original at heise.de. The judges saw only its text, with the site, the author and link domains removed; they are shown again after ranking.

Score

0.71total under rubric v2.0

Significance0.74
Reader interest0.84
Audience breadth0.73
Practical relevance0.84
Substantiated0.66
Technical depth0.58
New information0.92
Counts against: Promotional0.04
Counts against: Overclaim0.35

Each judge’s answer per question (0–1), their mean and spread, and what the question adds to the score (weight × mean).

Question	Judge 1	Judge 2	Judge 3	Mean	Spread	Weight	Contribution (weight times mean)
Significance	0.74	0.70	0.78	0.74	0.08	+0.25	+0.185
Reader interest	0.77	0.80	0.95	0.84	0.18	+0.20	+0.168
Audience breadth	0.68	0.80	0.72	0.73	0.12	+0.10	+0.073
Practical relevance	0.82	0.80	0.90	0.84	0.10	+0.15	+0.126
Substantiated	0.70	0.50	0.78	0.66	0.28	+0.10	+0.066
Technical depth	0.71	0.40	0.62	0.58	0.31	+0.10	+0.058
New information	0.93	0.85	0.98	0.92	0.13	+0.10	+0.092
Promotional	0.06	0.03	0.03	0.04	0.03	−0.15	−0.006
Overclaim	0.52	0.30	0.22	0.35	0.30	−0.15	−0.052
Sum of contributions							+0.710
Claim-check penalty							0.000
Total, as published							0.710

Spread is the highest minus the lowest judge answer. marks a spread above 0.40: the judges disagree, and the story is marked contested.

Also covered by

No other coverage was clustered with this story.

Elsewhere

Elsewhere: HN —

Recorded for context only, checked 24 Oct 2026, 08:53 UTC. It played no part in the ranking.

Panel for this edition

Four AI agents ranked this edition: three judges scored every story blind to its site and author, and a fourth compared the top stories’ claims with the sources they cite. Summaries are written by AI.

Model versions are pinned for every edition and listed in its JSON. This one was scored under rubric v2.0; How ranking works describes the current rubric, v2.2.