In Europe and other countries, a number of government websites, as well as school and hospital services, were temporarily shut down. The reason was critical vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language that powers a significant portion of websites on the internet. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
Operators are shutting down sites as a precaution while specialists install security updates. At the same time, technology companies warn that hackers have already begun exploiting the discovered flaws.
PHP developers have released emergency fixes and urged users to update their software immediately. The vulnerabilities had gone unnoticed for years until cybersecurity specialists discovered them using artificial intelligence.
PHP performs tasks on the server: for example, it processes a visitor's request, gathers the necessary information and sends the finished page to the browser. It is used by sites on WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento.
Flaws in such software can give attackers the ability to hack a site and gain access to its data. Therefore, cybersecurity agencies recommended that administrators install updates, and if that is not yet possible, temporarily shut down the sites.
In the Netherlands, the National Cyber Security Centre suspended the operation of its systems. The government portal Overheid.nl, the websites of the Port of Rotterdam, the KNVB football association, the five largest political parties and several hospitals were also shut down.
In Denmark, restrictions affected a number of services, including the national platform for information exchange between schools.
In Finland, the state IT service provider Valtori reported a preventive shutdown of public government online services.
The French Interior Ministry moved its websites into maintenance mode.
The organization that supports Wikipedia also temporarily shut down some systems until updates were installed. The Internet Archive, an online library that among other things preserves copies of web pages, also briefly suspended operations.
Artificial intelligence helped find the vulnerabilities, but it can also accelerate their exploitation by hackers. After fixes are published, it is easier for attackers to figure out how the flaw worked and try to attack sites that have not yet updated.
"This problem affects most of the internet," said Tiffany Farriss, acting executive director of the Drupal Association.
According to experts, small sites whose owners have few technical resources are especially vulnerable. On shared hosting, server updates are usually installed by the provider, so owners of such sites depend on how quickly it acts.
Automattic said that users of its hosting solutions, including WordPress.com and Tumblr, are protected from the discovered vulnerabilities.
The vulnerabilities potentially affect Kazakhstani sites that use PHP as well. However, there is no information yet about a complete shutdown of local services due to this problem.