WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Websites around the world went offline for hours Wednesday due to a flaw in PHP computer language.
With experts warning that hackers could exploit vulnerability in the programming language that powers most of the sites, many governments and International agencies were forced to take their sites down temporarily.
They included the official government sites of Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, France, Scotland, UK and Germany.
Security vulnerabilities in PHP also hit Wikipedia websites.
'The Wikimedia Foundation is currently in the process of addressing security vulnerabilities in PHP, the programming language that underpins most wikis, including the Wikimedia projects. This issue affects all known versions of PHP, and is not specific to the Wikimedia Foundation,' a spokesperson for the Foundation that runs the free online encyclopedia was quoted as saying. 'All Foundation-supported systems and volunteer-run systems that use PHP are affected. We have taken down a number of other systems as a precautionary measure until they can be safely patched.'
The US National Security Agency advised organisations to take their systems offline if they could not apply fixes in time. 'Effective Immediately, all organizations using PHP for their systems are advised to be prepared for an update addressing two critical vulnerabilities. PHP is widely used for web applications. These vulnerabilities often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database. If an immediate update is not feasible, it is recommend that organizations take the system offline until it can be fully mitigated. NSA will follow up shortly with more specific guidance,' NSA Cyber wrote on X.
The issue may affect around 30 million websites, according to BBC, which quoted a programming expert as saying.
Cloudflare and Amazon reported that cyber criminals have already carried out millions of hacking attempts.
The vulnerabilities were reportedly discovered by cyber-security researchers at Calif and Wiz.
For organizations using PHP, a program started by OpenAI called Patch the Planet shared a PHP version checker as a Codex skill to help operators identify potentially vulnerable PHP versions and, alongside PHP's and their providers' guidance, determine which updates apply.
'Given the severity of these flaws and PHP's widespread use, we consider this one of the most impactful security issues in recent memory,' OpenAI said in a blog post. 'It highlights how AI can uncover security flaws with internet-scale impact, but the same capabilities can also help attackers rapidly develop offensive tools and exploits.'
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