PHP vulnerabilities force Australian government websites offline

Several major Australian government websites, including those of the cyber defence agency and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, were taken offline after critical vulnerabilities were identified in PHP. The incident matters because PHP underpins a large share of websites, and the flaw could put sensitive information and vulnerable systems at risk.

The outages occurred in the early hours of Thursday and affected hundreds of websites worldwide. PHP is a scripting language used to build websites and apps and powers more than two-thirds of websites on the internet. Australia’s Signals Directorate advised organisations and individuals using PHP to monitor official guidance and apply security patches when available.