Major Websites Go Offline Across Europe Following Discovery of Critical Software Flaws

Websites Go Offline

Public services and online pages across Europe have been temporarily shut down ahead of an urgent software update. The Finnish government, the Dutch cyber-security agency, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, Edinburgh council, and several BBC programme pages including Doctor Who and The Traitors are among the services that have become inaccessible.

Security Warnings

Two critical security flaws were found in PHP, a programming language that forms the foundation for a vast amount of internet services. A patch to fix these problems was released on Wednesday afternoon. Cybersecurity agencies in the UK, EU, Australia, and Japan have strongly advised organisations to apply these fixes quickly or disconnect their systems from the internet to stay safe. Industry experts warn that these software weaknesses could allow remote hackers to install harmful software and crash web platforms. Cloudflare has already spotted early attacks starting to emerge.

Context

Software vulnerabilities are software flaws that malicious actors can exploit to gain unauthorized access to computer systems. Programming languages like PHP are widely used behind the scenes to run content management systems and dynamic web pages, making any widespread flaw a major security risk for organisations globally.