Arabic version: موقع الأمن السيبراني الأسترالي يتأثر بثغرة حرجة في PHP
According to ABC News, Australia’s cybersecurity website is among government services affected by two critical vulnerabilities in the widely used PHP programming language. Developers have urged website operators to update their software as soon as possible, while hackers are believed to be exploiting the flaws to target websites.
The Australian Signals Directorate said cyber.gov.au was among Australian government websites affected by the critical PHP issue. It advised organisations and individuals using PHP to monitor and review official PHP guidance and apply security patches as they become available. The Australian Cyber Security Centre, which is within the ASD, is also affected.
PHP is used to run websites, with servers assembling page content before sending it to browsers. The free, open-source software is maintained by volunteers and supports WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, shared hosting platforms and control panels. W3Techs estimates PHP runs roughly 75 per cent of websites whose programming language can be identified, while WordPress powers about 43 per cent of all websites.
European government departments and sites including Wikipedia are among those known to be affected. Government agencies in the Netherlands and Finland took sites offline as a precaution, while France’s Interior Ministry temporarily removed local government administrative websites from service while awaiting a fix. Danish municipal IT company Kombit shut down several services, including a national school communication platform.
Cloudflare chief technology officer Dane Knecht said early attacks were emerging and the company was updating firewall rules as a stopgap measure. Cybersecurity agencies in Europe, Australia, Japan and Britain have urged PHP users to update immediately or take websites offline until patches can be applied. Officials said PHP versions from PHP 5 onward could be affected, although PHP had not disclosed which versions were vulnerable.
