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Government institutions and entities in several countries suspended partial or full access to websites on Wednesday, as a precautionary measure following reports of "dangerous security vulnerabilities" in the "PHP" programming language.
According to the "Wall Street Journal," the cybersecurity firm "Calif" discovered a security vulnerability in "PHP" last August with the help of artificial intelligence, before information about it leaked to the media on Tuesday.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) warned of two critical vulnerabilities in "PHP" that could allow "malicious actors" to execute remote code, putting sensitive data and networks at risk.
The FBI noted that "PHP" is used to power about 70 percent of websites worldwide, calling on entities unable to update their sites immediately to temporarily take them offline.
Precautionary measures
In Japan, the "Kyodo" news agency reported that the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare temporarily suspended a website for an information system used by long-term care service providers.
Denmark, Norway, and Finland also issued warnings regarding the vulnerabilities and called for systems to be updated or temporarily taken offline if updates were not possible.
The Norwegian National Security Authority stated that the vulnerabilities could allow unauthorized parties to take control of affected systems without the need for a password or login, while websites belonging to official and educational entities in the country were taken offline.
In Finland, the National Cyber Security Centre announced the precautionary shutdown of some government websites, while other sites experienced outages.
Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten also announced the temporary closure of government websites used by citizens to access public services.
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