Websites Across Europe Taken Down to Protect Systems Multiple websites across Europe have been taken offline to protect against two critical cyber-security flaws in the PHP programming language. The vulnerabilities were discovered by AI and deemed the "most severe vulnerabilities ever discovered" by the tech firm Wiz. A fix was issued on Wednesday afternoon, but organizations unable to apply the fix in time were advised to take their sites down. The Finnish government, Edinburgh council, and the BBC are among the bodies that have taken their websites offline as a precaution. The Netherlands' cyber-security agency has also been affected, and CERT-EU warned that all versions of PHP 5 and later could be vulnerable, dating back to a version that was first released in 2004. However, the PHP Foundation has only issued the update for the latest versions, with users of PHP 8.1 or older being urged to upgrade. PHP is a widely used programming language for web development, powering a large portion of the internet. It is used on servers to implement what users see when they visit websites. The vulnerabilities were discovered by AI, highlighting the evolving nature of cyber threats.