Organisations worldwide took websites and online services offline after two critical PHP vulnerabilities emerged. The precautionary shutdowns spanned governments, hospitals, companies and major internet platforms.Organisations worldwide took websites and online services offline after two critical PHP vulnerabilities emerged.
Several government, school and hospital websites across Europe and beyond went offline on Wednesday as organisations rushed to protect their systems against two critical security vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language that powers a large share of the internet.Cybersecurity agencies worldwide warned organisations that could not apply security fixes in time to consider taking affected websites offline. PHP's developers released a set of updates to address the two previously identified critical vulnerabilities.The precautionary measures affected government portals, public services, hospitals, financial institutions, transport companies and major online platforms across several countries.
Some organisations temporarily suspended services while others took websites offline until they could apply the necessary security patches.Here is a look at the major websites and services that were taken offline or otherwise affected.GERMANY Germany's digital ministry said the federal IT service provider ITZBund had taken several websites offline after the discovery of the PHP vulnerabilities.A ministry spokesperson said the temporary deactivation was purely preventive and that authorities were not aware of any security incidents.FRANCE France's Interior Ministry temporarily took the websites of prefectures offline while awaiting a security fix for the PHP framework they use.Prefectures are local government administrative offices. The ministry said it had taken the precautionary measure while waiting for the framework's publisher to release a patch.BELGIUMBelgium's Foreign Ministry temporarily took its websites offline following reports of cyberattacks exploiting the PHP vulnerabilities.However, the country's cybersecurity centre said it had not recorded any attacks on Belgian websites.NETHERLANDSSeveral organisations in the Netherlands followed the example of the National Cyber Security Centre and proactively took their public-facing websites offline.The affected services included the Port of Rotterdam, the government website Overheid.nl, the national football association KNVB and the websites of the country's five largest political parties.
Numerous hospital websites across the Netherlands were also affected.FINLANDFinland's state IT centre, Valtori, shut down the government's public web services on Wednesday as a precautionary measure.Valtori said it had not identified any attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities and clarified that the outage had not resulted from a data breach.CZECH REPUBLICThe Czech government took its website offline at 7 pm local time on Wednesday (1700 GMT) following a recommendation from the country's cyber watchdog to allow authorities to implement the necessary security patches."The measure aims to ensure the secure operation of the website. During the shutdown, the site and its content will not be accessible to the public.
Services will be restored once the recommended security updates have been applied," the government office said.WIKIMEDIAThe Wikimedia Foundation, which operates the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, said it was working to address security vulnerabilities in PHP.The foundation said the vulnerabilities affected all foundation-supported systems and volunteer-run systems that use the programming language."We have taken down a number of other systems as a precautionary measure until they can be safely patched," the foundation said in a statement.INTERNET ARCHIVEThe Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library, took its portal offline on Wednesday for emergency maintenance and security patches.The organisation announced the move in a post on X. The website has since returned online.Orange SAFrench telecommunications group Orange temporarily suspended access to several websites and applications that use PHP as a precaution.The measure affected websites, services and applications across several of the company's subsidiaries and entities.JAPANSeveral Japanese government agencies partially or temporarily suspended online services while implementing security measures.The Ministry of Finance and the Meteorological Agency partially suspended their online services, while the National Tax Agency temporarily took its service offline.Several Japanese companies also announced temporary suspensions of internet services as part of emergency measures.
They included brokerage Nomura (8604.T), lender Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (8306.T), airline ANA (9202.T) and East Japan Railway (9020.T).UNITED KINGDOMThe British public service broadcaster BBC said it had taken some of its web portals offline on Wednesday.The broadcaster also reported that several municipalities had taken down their web services, including the city of Edinburgh.CANADAThe Government of Canada said some of its websites might be temporarily unavailable or experience service disruptions because of the security measures.However, the government said there was no indication at the time that any of its systems or information holdings had been compromised.The precautionary shutdowns across multiple countries and sectors underscored the widespread impact of the PHP vulnerabilities, as organisations prioritised applying security fixes and protecting their systems against potential exploitation.- Ends