Video · Everlast AI ·
Black October: AI cripples half of Germany! What's really behind it | AI NEWS
In a KI-News video, Leonard Schweding breaks down a wave of cybersecurity incidents dubbed the 'Black October.' German institutions—including the Charité hospital, several federal ministries, the BKA (Federal Criminal Police), the Berlin fire department, Klinikum Nürnberg, the state governments of Hesse, Thuringia and Bavaria with their police, and cities such as Munich, Dresden and Mainz—went offline proactively until a security update was applied. The cause most cited is a set of zero-day vulnerabilities in PHP, the server-side language behind many sites including WordPress and Wikipedia, found by security researcher Ryan Austin with OpenAI's GPT-5.6 under the 'Patch the Planet' program, and independently by the security firm WithSecure using Gemini and GPT-5.6; the flaw has reportedly sat in the code for 14 years. Schweding separates three narratives: (1) AI models finding and closing zero-days before they can be exploited—a positive development; (2) genuine malicious intrusions, including a state-proximate Chinese hacker group using a freely available tool called Artix to steal Connectwise cloud-app credentials and log directly into the Microsoft accounts of over 2,250 firm accounts, plus attacks involving stolen OpenAI API keys and a password smuggled into an official LiteLLM update; and (3) what he calls the most important issue: the US government was informed of the PHP vulnerability five days before its publication, with OpenAI coordinating disclosure with CISA and a
