Government websites across Europe and other regions were taken offline after cybersecurity researchers uncovered critical vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language used by a large portion of the internet. The flaws prompted urgent warnings from cybersecurity agencies, while developers released security updates and advised website operators to install them immediately. Authorities in the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Finland temporarily shut down websites and online services as a precaution. Wikipedia and the Internet Archive also reported taking some systems offline while security measures were applied. Experts warned that attackers could exploit the vulnerabilities more quickly now that the weaknesses and their fixes had become public. Cybersecurity firms Calif and Wiz said artificial intelligence tools helped identify the flaws, which had remained hidden in PHP for years. Wiz reported using its own automated research technology alongside Google Gemini and OpenAI technology during its investigation. The vulnerabilities could affect websites built with widely used platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento. Internet intelligence firm Censys reported that around 1.5 million of 2.6 million monitored hosts were running PHP versions without an available fix. Amazon also reported detecting attempted exploitation against a decoy system before public disclosure, followed by further attempts. Security specialists urged website administrators to update affected software immediately or temporarily take vulnerable websites offline until patches could be installed.
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