Websites taken offline globally following discovery of critical PHP security flaws

International governments and cyber security agencies have urged organisations to address two critical security flaws in the PHP programming language, BBC News reported on Wednesday. A fix for the vulnerabilities was issued on Wednesday afternoon. PHP is a programming language widely used to power websites across the internet. [1]

Multiple cyber security agencies advised organisations that cannot apply the fixes in time to consider taking their websites down. Following the advice, entities including the Finnish government, Edinburgh council, and BBC News took pages offline, according to BBC News. [1]

The flaws were discovered by artificial intelligence. Cyber security firm Wiz described the security issues as the most severe vulnerabilities ever found by artificial intelligence, BBC News reported. [1]

The major disruption follows other recent high profile cyber incidents. As FTMQ News reported earlier, a data breach at the United States military Defense Manpower Data Center exposed records of over three million people, while fashion retailer Asos suffered a cyber attack that compromised customer contact details and search histories. [2][3]