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Following the discovery of two major CVSS 9.2 vulnerabilities in PHP, a wave of attacks and preventive website shutdowns occurred around the world. Many governments and companies in Asia and Europe rushed to fix them. Website operators need to find out the version and hosting status.
Two major security vulnerabilities have emerged in the widely used programming language PHP. Although patches have been released,hacker Attacks have also been launched, prompting Asian, European and American governments and companies to increase patching, and prompting some websites to preventively suspend services. Taiwan’s Information Security Agency has also issued a warning. This wave of incidents does not mean that all closed websites have been hacked, but website operators cannot wait for the normal automatic updates.
The PHP development team released an emergency patch on Wednesday and urged users to update immediately. Global security agencies also recommend that affected websites that cannot be fixed in time should suspend their services first.
Amazon That said, on October 17, four days before the vulnerability became public, an attempted attack on a “honeypot” system used to trap hackers was discovered. There were repeated attempts by different attackers before it went public on Wednesday. Amazon is not yet sure whether these attacks would be successful if targeted at real websites, but said the vulnerabilities are now widely exploited.
Experts worry that after the patch is made public, hackers could use AI to analyze vulnerabilities and intensify attacks on websites that have not yet been updated.
Both vulnerabilities scored 9.2 out of 10 on the CVSS 4.0 risk score. The European Union’s security response group CERT-EU said hackers may be able to execute programs on vulnerable servers via the Internet without logging in.
Website hosting company GoDaddy said the consequences could include data being stolen, web pages being compromised or even the entire system being compromised.
However, whether a website is affected requires confirmation of the PHP version, system settings, and protective measures used. The use of PHP cannot be equated with direct hacking.
PHP is a programming language used on the backend of websites. When a user opens a web page, the server assembles the content through PHP and then sends the entire page to the browser. It is free, open-source software maintained by volunteers and often not directly operated by website operators.
According to data from W3Tech, about 70% to three-quarters of websites that can recognize back-end programming languages use PHP. This ratio is not equal for all websites.
WordPress, used by about 40% of the world’s websites, is written primarily in PHP; Platforms like Drupal, Joomla, and Magento also use PHP, so the vulnerability has widespread impact.
Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sane on Wednesday night called on companies to make repairs as quickly as possible. If it is difficult to update in a timely manner, they may consider suspending websites or other services.
