India, Oct. 22 -- Government websites across Europe were taken offline on Wednesday as cybersecurity experts raised concerns about serious security flaws in PHP, a programming language used by millions of websites. The move came as the US National Security Agency (NSA) warned organisations to install security updates immediately or take their servers offline.

The security scare highlights how artificial intelligence (AI) is helping hackers find and exploit software weaknesses much faster than before. Vulnerabilities that once took weeks or months to discover and exploit can now be used within hours, cybersecurity experts told CNBC.

Matt Suiche, a researcher at cybersecurity startup Tolmo, said the level of urgency around these threats w...