Critical PHP vulnerability forces major websites offline globally

Authorities in the United States, Europe and Britain recommended temporary shutdowns of websites after critical vulnerabilities were discovered in PHP, a widely-used programming language that underpins web server operations. According to W3Techs, PHP powers 69% of all websites globally, and Censys estimated approximately 55 million web properties were running the vulnerable software at the time the flaw was disclosed.

The PHP security team released patches around 10 a.m. ET, but several major websites remained offline into Wednesday morning as administrators waited to confirm their systems were secure. Services that were either affected or voluntarily suspended included Pinboard, a bookmarking platform, portions of Wikipedia, and the forums 4Chan and Something Awful. ITmedia, a Japanese news outlet, reported that numerous Japanese websites also went offline as a precaution, including systems used by daycare centres and video game platforms.

OpenAI stated that it had assisted in discovering the vulnerability and notified PHP's maintainers before the flaw could be exploited more broadly. Silas Cutler, a security researcher at Censys, suggested it could take days to determine how many sites had already been compromised before patches were applied, noting that investigators were still attempting to move from determining that all PHP was vulnerable to better understanding the actual scope of the problem.