A serious security flaw in the PHP programming language, which is used by a large percentage of websites, has prompted UK government institutions to temporarily shut down their websites.
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The effects of the vulnerability extended to the Finnish government website and websites belonging to a number of British local authorities, including the city councils of Oxford and Edinburgh, as well as pages linked to some BBC programs.
According to the cybersecurity company Cloudflare, PHP is used in about 70% of websites, and it is also used by popular platforms such as WordPress and Magento.
The danger of the vulnerability lies in the fact that it could allow attackers to control the servers running the affected websites, opening the door to several risks, most notably:
Hacking into corporate systems and using them as a launching pad for other attacks.
Carrying out fraudulent activities, including impersonating executives.
This paves the way for ransomware attacks, which disable systems or encrypt files to demand money in exchange for their release.
Ciaran Martin, the former head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, warned of the potential for payment card data theft, urging individuals to be wary of fraud attempts.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said that attempts to exploit the vulnerability increased significantly after it was publicly announced.
He explained that the company detected thousands of attempts before the announcement, then the number rose to tens of thousands within 45 minutes, and hundreds of thousands within two hours, before reaching millions of attempts, according to what he published via the "X" platform.
The Wall Street Journal reported that researcher Ryan Austin discovered the vulnerability in August, using a sophisticated artificial intelligence model developed by OpenAI.
OpenAI announced that it has supported a team of researchers working to address the problem over the past two months, noting that artificial intelligence can help detect vulnerabilities early, but it can also be used to exploit them.
The UK's National Cyber Security Centre has urged organizations to update their software to a version that addresses the vulnerability, stressing the need to consider temporarily shutting down affected sites if the update cannot be installed immediately.
For its part, the British government confirmed that work is underway to identify systems at risk and address potential vulnerabilities, and urged public and private institutions to follow security guidelines to protect their systems.
Implementing these measures may temporarily halt some government e-services, but it is not believed that vital public services have been affected so far.
PHP developers had planned to release a security update on Thursday, before they expedited its release following a leak of information about efforts to fix the vulnerability.
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