Japanese companies halt online services out of abundance of caution
Companies have rushed to patch vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language used by roughly 70% of websites. © Reuters
MASAHARU BAN and HIROKO NISHIMURA
October 24, 2026 03:49 JST
PALO ALTO, California/NEW YORK -- The revelation of security flaws in the PHP programming language spurred hundreds of Japanese websites to go offline for maintenance, but their American counterparts tended to favor behind-the-scenes fixes that did not disrupt services.