Government websites across Europe and other regions were taken offline on Wednesday after two critical security flaws were disclosed in PHP, one of the most widely used programming languages on the internet. The PHP development team said Tuesday local time that it had identified the vulnerabilities and urged users to update immediately once patches became available. On Wednesday, the team said fixed versions had been released.
Before the patched releases were published, some government agencies in countries including the Netherlands and Finland had already shut down parts of their websites as a precaution, following reports that hackers were exploiting the flaws to break into sites. The disruption spread widely across Europe.
Among the affected sites were the Port of Rotterdam, the Dutch government portal Overheid.nl, the Royal Dutch Football Association, websites belonging to the country’s five largest political parties, and several hospital websites. According to W3Techs, about 75% of websites with an identifiable server-side programming language use PHP. WordPress, which runs on PHP, powers about 43% of all websites globally.
Multiple government websites across Europe and other regions were forced offline on Wednesday after critical security flaws were disclosed in PHP, a programming language used widely across the web. Site operators moved to protect their systems as the issue spread.
The PHP development team said Tuesday local time that it had found two critical vulnerabilities and urged users to update as soon as patched releases became available. On Wednesday, the team said new versions containing fixes had been officially released.
Sites were shut down before patches went live
Before the fixed versions were published, reports said hackers were already exploiting the flaws to compromise websites. Government agencies in countries including the Netherlands and Finland responded by taking some sites offline as a precaution.
The incident caused broad disruption across Europe. Sites that were temporarily shut down included the Port of Rotterdam, the Dutch government portal Overheid.nl, the Royal Dutch Football Association, websites of the country’s five largest political parties, and several hospital websites.
PHP underpins a large share of the web
PHP is one of the most widely used programming languages on the internet and supports platforms including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento.
According to web technology tracking firm W3Techs, about 75% of websites with an identifiable programming language use PHP. WordPress powers about 43% of websites globally, spanning blogs, small business sites, government portals, e-commerce platforms and news websites.
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