UK government services offline after global PHP cybersecurity threat
A critical security vulnerability in the PHP programming language has forced several UK government services offline as a precaution. Cybersecurity officials are working to patch the flaw, which affects a significant portion of the global web infrastructure.
Why it matters
The incident underscores the fragility of global digital infrastructure and the potential for widespread disruption caused by vulnerabilities in foundational software.
Cybersecurity chiefs warned UK organisations that a ‘critical security issue’ had been discovered in the programming language PHP
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Dozens of government services are offline after they were hit by a major cyber-security issue affecting millions of sites worldwide.
A total of 32 UK government services are temporarily offline and four are partially unavailable, ministers confirmed on Thursday.
Organisations around the world have been scrambling to address the flaw in the programming language PHP, which powers almost 70 per cent of websites, according to cybersecurity firm Cloudflare . UK cybersecurity chiefs alerted organisations to the "critical security issue" on Wednesday .
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