Crucial vulnerabilities in a programming language that underpins much of the internet are so severe that European and British authorities have recommended websites temporarily go offline until they can be fixed.
\n\nSeveral websites were temporarily down as of Wednesday morning, citing fear that hackers could take them over. Those include Pinboard, a bookmarking site, and some parts of Wikipedia.
\n\nJapanese websites are also voluntarily offline, including systems for daycare centers and video games, the Japanese tech news site ITmedia reported.
\n\nThe flaws are in the PHP language, which powers how web servers process code.
\n\nThe security team that maintains PHP announced Wednesday that it would release patches to fix the problem at 10 a.m. ET.
\n\n“All PHP users are encouraged to prepare now so they can upgrade as soon as the release is available,” it said.
\n\nIt is unclear how badly hackers are exploiting the flaw in the meantime. Patchstack, a cybersecurity platform, said it had received “reports of active exploitation.”
\n\nThe chief technical officer of Cloudflare, one of the internet’s largest website hosting companies, wrote on X, “We are seeing early attacks emerging and are updating mitigations as new vectors show up.”
\n\nCERT-EU, the European Union’s technical cybersecurity advisory…
Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business