Exploit Attempts Reach Millions Within Hours of PHP Flaw Disclosure; Government Websites Go Offline in Europe and MUFG Suspends Some Online Services
Exploit attempts against a critical vulnerability in PHP, the widely used web programming language, surged from a trickle to millions within hours of the flaw's public disclosure, Reuters reported on October 22. Matthew Prince, chief executive of cloud services firm Cloudflare, said in a post on X late on Wednesday: "In the 10 hours before it was publicly announced, across the network we saw thousands of attempts to exploit it. That jumped to tens of thousands in the 45 minutes post announcement, hundreds of thousands within 2 hours, and millions now."
The fallout quickly spread beyond the technology sector. Government websites in Europe and elsewhere went offline on Wednesday after the disclosure sent website operators around the world scrambling to protect their systems. In the Netherlands, parliament and the National Cyber Security Centre took systems offline as a precaution, as GSM reported earlier. In Japan, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group said it was temporarily suspending some internet services due to emergency measures, and the Finance Ministry also suspended some website content and services while security measures were implemented. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Wednesday urged website owners to check whether their sites use PHP and prepare to apply the new fix.
PHP's developers released urgent fixes on Wednesday. Reuters said the vulnerabilities had been lurking in the software for years until they were uncovered using super intelligence, and that all users were "encouraged to update immediately." Because PHP powers a large share of the world's websites, the pace of patching remains a focus for governments and financial institutions.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: Wikimedia Commons · NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/T. Slovinský · CC BY 4.0
- 2026-10-21SI Finds Critical PHP Flaw Affecting 70% of Websites; White House Moves to Expedite Fix
- 2026-10-22Dutch Parliament and Cyber Security Centre Websites Taken Offline as Precaution Over Critical PHP Flaws
- 2026-10-22Exploit Attempts Reach Millions Within Hours of PHP Flaw Disclosure; Government Websites Go Offline in Europe and MUFG Suspends Some Online ServicesThis story
- 2026-10-22PHP Flaw Fallout Widens: UK Confirms 32 Government Services Taken Offline as Precaution; Minister Says No Confirmed Compromise of Central Systems
- 2026-10-23Follow-Up: PHP2Shell Response Enters Day Two as NSA, FBI and CISA Detail Patch-or-Offline Steps and the National Writers Union Takes Its Site Down as a Precaution
