Danish Industry urges immediate updates after PHP flaws emerge

Danish Industry has urged companies and public authorities to update internet-facing systems after two serious vulnerabilities were found in PHP, a widely used programming language behind websites and online services, DR reports.

Several public authorities in Denmark and other countries shut down websites or digital services on Wednesday as a precaution. The municipal IT organisation Kombit told Ritzau that the potential security risk behind the temporary closure of Aula was related to the PHP vulnerabilities. Denmark’s Meteorological Institute also shut down several digital services.

Jeppe Engell, a cybersecurity expert at Danish Industry, said all companies and authorities with PHP solutions online should update them immediately.

Danish Industry said the vulnerabilities had remained undiscovered for more than 10 years and were found using artificial intelligence. The developers behind PHP said on Tuesday that they had identified the two critical flaws. They released an update to fix them at 13:45 on Wednesday.

Reuters reported that hackers had tried to exploit the vulnerabilities before the update was released. Public authorities in several countries, including Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, France and Germany, shut down websites. Security authorities in Australia and Japan also urged users to update their PHP systems or temporarily take websites offline until they were updated, according to Norway’s NTB news agency.