Governments and businesses across Europe took websites offline on Wednesday, after cybersecurity agencies issued urgent warnings over critical vulnerabilities in the widely used PHP programming language.
The emergency response followed the discovery of previously hidden security flaws identified with the help of artificial intelligence, prompting developers to release fixes and urge users to update their systems immediately.
Cybersecurity agencies in Europe and Asia are warning website operators to install the latest security patches without delay or temporarily take vulnerable websites offline until updates can be applied.
According to Reuters, technology firms have warned that hackers may already be exploiting the flaws. Cybersecurity experts have also cautioned that a wave of attempted intrusions could follow as malicious actors race to exploit vulnerable systems before operators install the fixes.
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“This issue impacts the majority of the Internet,” Tiffany Farriss, interim chief executive of the Drupal Association, said, warning that servers running PHP versions released over the past two decades could be affected.
The scale of the exposure has raised concerns among website operators, governments and cybersecurity professionals worldwide. Reports indicate that several Dutch organizations took precautionary measures, including the country’s cybersecurity agency, the operator of Wikipedia, the Port of Rotterdam, the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB), websites belonging to the country’s five largest political parties, hospitals and IT service providers. France’s Interior Ministry was also among the organisations reported to have taken protective action.
Cybersecurity authorities in Europe, Australia, Japan and Britain have urged affected users to apply the available patches immediately or take vulnerable websites offline while systems are secured.
The White House also issued a statement saying it was aware of the situation.
Earlier this week, a Google Cloud outage linked to an electrical fault affected UK businesses and Revolut banking services worldwide.