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Websites taken down worldwide as critical cyber-security update issued
· Confirmed
In Short: Government websites worldwide went offline Wednesday after critical security flaws in PHP were discovered.
Government websites across Europe and other parts of the world went offline Wednesday after critical security flaws in PHP, a widely used programming language, were discovered using artificial intelligence, according to Arise News (Finland) and BBC (United Kingdom).
Arise News reported that Finland experienced wider disruption after state IT services provider Valtori announced that government public network services had been taken offline as a precautionary measure. Meanwhile, BBC noted that the vulnerabilities were discovered by cyber-security researchers at the firms Calif and Wiz.
According to web technology tracker W3Techs, PHP powers roughly 75% of websites whose programming language can be identified, as reported by Arise News. However, Newsweek cited Wiz Research estimating that PHP powers roughly 70% of websites worldwide, though not all are necessarily vulnerable to these specific attacks.
Experts identified smaller websites as particularly vulnerable, especially those operated by individuals and organizations with limited technical resources, as noted by Arise News. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in the UK urged UK organizations to prepare for emergency updates to software used to run websites around the world, amid fears hackers could exploit the weaknesses to break into their systems.
International governments and agencies have urged websites to address two critical cyber-security flaws in PHP, which powers much of the internet, including websites built with WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Magento, according to BBC (United Kingdom) and The National Scot (Scotland).
In Canada, AI and digital innovation minister Evan Solomon said some government websites have been taken temporarily offline “as a precaution to protect government systems and Canadians’ information,” as reported by BetaKit and Global News (Canada).
Developers of the PHP programming language acknowledged a delay in addressing a previously identified flaw and said a set of new updates fixing two critical vulnerabilities was now live, as reported by Cyprus Mail (Cyprus) and VOCM (Canada).
The vulnerabilities were rated a severity of 9.2 out of 10, with some cybersecurity agencies encouraging websites to temporarily take their systems offline if they’re unable to apply the fix immediately, as noted by The Verge.
The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and the European Union’s cyber-security response team have urged organizations to identify vulnerable systems and apply the fixes without delay, as reported by Olive Press News Spain (Spain) and NL Times (Netherlands).
The scale of the issue is massive, with all servers using any version of PHP released in the last 20 years potentially vulnerable, as stated by Arise News. The use of AI in discovering these vulnerabilities has made the process more practical, enabling researchers to develop and adapt working exploits across multiple applications in hours, as noted by BBC (United Kingdom).
What's confirmed
- International governments and agencies have urged websites to address two critical cyber-security flaws in a programming language which powers much of the internet.
- Home » Tech » Critical Cybersecurity Flaws Prompt Websites Worldwide to Go Offline Rabat – Government websites and online services worldwide have been temporarily taken offline after researchers discovered two critical security vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language widely used to power websites and web applications.
- Official websites use.gov A.gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
What's still developing
- “These vulnerabilities affect websites worldwide and make it possible to remotely control a server,” the spokesperson said.
- Two critical security vulnerabilities were found on Wednesday Two critical security vulnerabilities were found on Wednesday Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later?
- Wiz, one of the security firms that found the issues, estimated that PHP runs about 70 percent of the world's websites and said the flaws rank "among the most severe vulnerabilities discovered in PHP, and arguably in software history."
- .S. government websites, with similar activity reported against an Australian government health portal and university data systems.
- Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
- Gemini found "public information online and guessed credentials to access websites it thought were part of the test", a Google official told the BBC, noting that in each instance "the model stopped".
- RELATED: U of T’s Citizen Lab exposes “nightmare” spyware hack that requires no clicks from users PHP has since published a security fix for the issues, but it is only available for up-to-date versions of the software.
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