A critical vulnerability in the PHP programming language has forced organisations worldwide, including the UK government, to take websites offline as a precaution. Experts warn the flaw could expose millions of sites to hacking if not patched quickly.
01Summary
- 01The UK government took 32 services offline and four were partially unavailable as a precaution.
- 02The PHP Foundation warned that unauthenticated attackers could remotely execute code on servers running affected versions.
- 03Cloudflare saw exploitation attempts jump from thousands to millions within hours of the public announcement.
- 04No successful hacks have been reported, but the full impact may take months to become apparent.
- 05The vulnerabilities, dubbed 'php2shell', affect the PHP language itself and were partly discovered using AI tools.
02Why it matters
This matters because PHP powers 70% of the world's websites, so the flaw could disrupt many services you rely on, from government portals to online shops. Without quick patching, your data on affected sites could be at risk.
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