Websites across Europe go offline after warning issued for critical software update

Organisations unable to apply key fixes to widely used software should consider taking their websites down, UK and international cybersecurity officials have warned.

The developers of the PHP programming language, which is extensively used across the internet, said on Wednesday a set of new ​updates fixing two previously identified critical vulnerabilities was now ​live.

It strongly encouraged ‌users to update software immediately.

Concerns have escalated in recent days that websites running software would be exposed to serious cyber intrusions.

PHP said both vulnerabilities were rated 9.2 on the CVSS v4.0 severity scale and urged users to "upgrade as soon as the release is available".

Government websites in Europe and ‌elsewhere went offline on Wednesday as organisations scrambled to protect their systems.

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French government websites were taken offline temporarily as it waited for the PHP fix. Users visiting these websites were told there was "ongoing maintenance".

Also, government agencies in the Netherlands and Finland were among those which took sites offline as a precaution.

The ‌Wikimedia Foundation, which ‌runs online encyclopedia Wikipedia, was one company on Wednesday which said it was ‌in the process of addressing ​security vulnerabilities in the PHP programming ​language.

The European Union ‌Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-EU) said on Tuesday that the 9.2 rating indicated a risk of unauthenticated remote code execution, a type of flaw that can allow attackers to run malicious code on vulnerable systems without logging in.

It urged organisations to prepare for the immediate patching of affected assets and said those unable to do so should consider taking their sites offline.

Sky News' science and technology editor, Tom Clarke, said: "The first thing to get across is the scale; from Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, government websites are being taken offline.

"It's important to say this is not because of a hack, it's because of a vulnerability that has been discovered by cyber security companies and communicated globally by national cyber security agencies - but is a vulnerability so widespread across the internet that it affects government websites, as well as many businesses as well.

"We are going to be seeing in the coming hours and days a huge effort to patch that vulnerability, before, now it's been made public, nefarious actors, hackers, might try to exploit it."

Clarke said PHP is "quite an old programming language" but it is ingrained throughout the internet - with up to "70% of the world's web pages" having this language built into them.

He noted UK government websites are not directly affected, but "ends of their system will be", for example council websites or small businesses, who may need to update their systems.

Web hosting provider GoDaddy said the flaws could allow attackers to access affected servers which could potentially lead to data theft, website defacement or full system compromise.

The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) urged organisations to ​identify PHP systems in their environments, prepare to apply patches and monitor applications for ​signs of malicious activity.

Cybersecurity agencies in Britain and Japan are also among those urging PHP users to update immediately or take websites offline until patches can be applied.

Dane Knecht, the chief technology officer of Web and cloud security firm Cloudflare, said that attacks were already happening and Cloudflare was updating its firewall ‌rules as a stopgap measure.

He said on X: "We are seeing early attacks emerging and are updating mitigations as new vectors show up. This is a STOPGAP only. Patch as soon as PHP releases the update."

Don Smith, VP Threat Intelligence, Sophos Counter Threat Unit, said: "Security teams should prioritise internet-facing systems, confirming which versions are affected as soon as the official advisory is published, and apply the updates without delay.

"Threat actors move fast, especially with the help of AI and this will likely be a priority target for them over the coming hours and days so it is crucial organisations monitor PHP and web-server processes for unusual processes, command execution or other signs that an attacker may already have gained a foothold."

(c) Sky News 2026: Websites across Europe go offline after warning issued for critical software update