Users around the world were met with error messages when they tried to use websites on Thursday as governments, broadcasters and companies scrambled to patch a critical flaw that exposed their sites to hackers.
Many websites were taken down as an emergency precaution after security researchers found major flaws in PHP, a widely used programming language. While recent data suggests that its use is waning, about 70 percent of all websites and web applications use PHP, according to some estimates.
Governments, including those of Germany and Kenya, moved quickly to secure official websites. Some websites were back up on Thursday, but others remained offline.
In the Netherlands, the portal that gives citizens access to government services was down Wednesday and into Thursday, as were a crime tip website and the country’s digital ID site, according to Dutch media reports. The Netherlands Cybersecurity Center issued instructions on how to add security updates, even as its own site was unavailable.
Rob Jetten, the Dutch prime minister, said on social media that his cabinet was closely monitoring the vulnerability.
Matthew Prince, the chief executive of Cloudflare, a company that helps websites secure and manage their internet traffic, said that it saw “thousands of attempts to exploit” the flaw in the hours before it was publicly announced.
“That jumped to tens of thousands in the 45 minutes post announcement, hundreds of thousands within 2 hours, and millions now,” Mr. Prince said in an overnight social media post.
Security researchers using OpenAI’s advanced artificial intelligence models found the vulnerability, which could allow hackers to take control of servers, steal private data and deface websites, experts said.
PHP, a decades-old language that was originally short for “personal home page,” is a critical ingredient in popular services like WordPress and Drupal.
The nonprofit PHP Foundation released a patch Wednesday morning, and security experts said that correctly applying it should protect websites from harm. But fast-moving hackers could exploit the flaws if they are not fixed quickly enough.
The scope of PHP’s importance was evident in the diversity of websites that were taken down around the world in the sudden rush to fix the flaw.
In Japan, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi encouraged business to take down their sites, saying on social media that access to her official website had been briefly suspended until updates were installed. In Britain, fans of the reality television show “The Traitors” were met with a cutesy error message with a picture of knitted mice until access was restored. In France, services on the official tax website were not yet fully restored.
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