Government websites across Europe and other regions went offline on Wednesday after the discovery of two critical vulnerabilities in PHP, a widely used programming language that powers a significant portion of the internet. PHP developers disclosed the security flaws on Tuesday and urged users to update their systems as soon as patches became available. Amid reports that hackers were already exploiting the vulnerabilities, government agencies in the Netherlands and Finland took websites offline as a precaution.
The vulnerabilities have triggered widespread cybersecurity concerns because PHP supports popular platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento, along with numerous hosting services and web applications. Cloudflare Chief Technology Officer Dane Knecht confirmed that early attacks were emerging and said the company was updating its firewall rules to provide temporary protection. However, he stressed that these measures were only a stopgap and urged website operators to install the official security patches as soon as they were released.
Cybersecurity agencies in Europe, Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom have advised PHP users to update their systems immediately or take affected websites offline until patches can be applied. The Dutch cybersecurity agency also temporarily shut down its website as a precaution. Meanwhile, Wordfence warned that automatic WordPress updates would not resolve the issue, urging website owners to check with their hosting providers or administrators to ensure PHP was updated. Officials indicated that versions from PHP 5 onward could be affected, although the specific vulnerable versions had not yet been confirmed.
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