Websites worldwide have temporarily taken their pages offline to safeguard systems following the release of a critical software update addressing severe vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language.
International governments and cyber-security agencies issued urgent advisories after the flaws—discovered by artificial intelligence—were publicized on Wednesday afternoon. Cloud-security firm Wiz described the issue as the most severe vulnerability ever uncovered by AI technology.
Organizations unable to apply the necessary software patches immediately were advised to take their sites offline. As a precaution, bodies including the Finnish government, Edinburgh council, and the BBC temporarily suspended public web services.
The PHP Foundation released a software update to address the issue, though fixes were primarily issued for the latest versions. Cyber-security entities, including CERT-EU, warned that versions dating back to PHP 5 (launched in 2004) could be affected, prompting calls for users running PHP 8.1 or older to upgrade.
PHP is a widely used programming language that powers servers across a significant portion of the global internet, though not all websites rely on it.
