Government and other websites in Europe and US go offline after PHP security flaws disclosed

Government and other websites in Europe and the United States went offline on Wednesday after the disclosure of critical vulnerabilities, dubbed "PHP2Shell," in PHP, the open-source programming language behind many sites. Germany, France, Belgium, Finland and the Netherlands took government websites offline, Reuters reported, including the home page of the Dutch parliament's lower house. In the Netherlands, hospitals, political organizations and the Port of Rotterdam were also affected. Something Awful shut its message boards, and the Wikimedia Foundation disabled supporting services as a precaution. Cloudflare said nearly 70% of websites use PHP and reported detecting attacks targeting the flaws, though widespread successful breaches have not been confirmed. Wiz researchers showed hackers could seize servers without logging in. PHP developers issued emergency patches Wednesday and warned that temporary safeguards cannot fully protect vulnerable systems. The PHP Foundation said signs of one underlying problem emerged in a 2024 audit but stayed unresolved amid technical challenges and limited engineering resources.

Left-leaning outlets had not reported this story at the time of writing, while alternative/independent and right-leaning outlets had. Reuters, the alternative source, leads with government websites going dark and describes the flaw as AI-discovered. The New York Post emphasizes technical and corporate detail, including Cloudflare, Wiz and the PHP Foundation's admission. The Washington Times focuses on European government sites, citing the Dutch parliament, and on