As of: 2026-10-22 20:06 CEST.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/p/2026-10-22-eastdakota-php2shell-exploit-attempts/

# Cloudflare CEO: PHP2Shell exploit attempts went from thousands before disclosure to millions

Matthew Prince (@eastdakota), X, 2026-10-22. Importance: major (4 of 5).
Source: https://x.com/eastdakota/status/2113079352682570051

## Why it matters

First-hand network-scale numbers on how fast PHP2Shell exploitation ramped after disclosure; 1.86M views.

## Summary

Cloudflare's CEO gives exploit-attempt counts across Cloudflare's network before and after the PHP2Shell disclosure.

## Archived text

> Some stats on #php2shell. In the 10 hours before it was publicly announced, across the @Cloudflare network we saw thousands of attempts to exploit it. That jumped to tens of thousands in the 45 minutes post announcement, hundreds of thousands within 2 hours, and millions now.

Counts: 1,859,310 views (at fetch time, 2026-10-22)

## Cited in

- 2026-10-21: [PHP2Shell: critical remote-code-execution flaws in PHP, found with GPT-5.6 Sol and Gemini 4 Argon, force emergency patching and take websites offline worldwide](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-21-php2shell-ai-found-php-rce/)