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Race to update services' computer systems after cyber-security flaw found
BBC • • business
Key Points:
- Critical vulnerabilities were discovered in the PHP programming language, which powers around 70% of the world's websites, prompting global efforts to patch systems and take some sites offline as a precaution.
- The UK government temporarily took 32 services offline and partially disabled four more to apply security updates, with no confirmed successful hacks reported so far.
- Cybersecurity experts warn that the impact of the flaws, dubbed "php2shell," may take months to fully emerge, while thousands to millions of attack attempts have been detected since the vulnerabilities were revealed.
- Major organizations including Cloudflare and Amazon reported high volumes of exploitation attempts, though their services remained operational.
- The incident has caused significant disruption, with businesses and public services experiencing outages and delays, highlighting the challenges of rapidly addressing widespread security flaws in essential internet infrastructure.
